ART CITIES: Hong Kong-How to be Happy Together

Luke Ching, Narcissist, 2024, single-channel video. Courtesy of the artistDeparting loosely from Wong Kar Wai’s “Happy Together” (1997), the exhibition “How to be Happy Together?” enacts a critique of dualism and the questions raised by the dual and its split—between intimate and antagonistic partners, between political entities, between ‘us’ and ‘them’, and even between ‘I’ and ‘me’, transcending the logic of ‘either/or’ central to racial capitalism and colonial modernity. 

By Efi Micchalarou
Photo: Para Site Archive

The primary setting for Wong Kar Wai’s queer Hong Kong cinema classic is Buenos Aires—the literal opposite side of the world from Hong Kong. Featuring over twenty artists from Hong Kong, its neighbouring localities, and Latin America, the exhibition alludes to Hong Kong’s clichéd status as a para-site ‘between east and west’, and ‘between tradition and modernity’, in order to interrogate encounters both imagined and real between two seemingly distant ends of the world. It engages with a wide range of artistic practices that stay formally within the pas de deux yet promiscuously open up to an unexpected array of couplings and decouplings, spotlighting overlooked historical, social, and cultural connections between Greater China and the world to rethink possibilities of a queer happy-togetherness.  The exhibition’s unique spatial design takes its cue from the Tai hexagram of I Ching, which is often used to represent the nine orifices of the human body. Central to the exhibition is the imagery of the orifice, and more broadly, the hole as a portal, which can function as a site for both concealment and revelation. For the first time since Para Site moved to its current location, all nine windows in the exhibition space are unobstructed, allowing new pathways towards a queer cosmos of happy-togetherness to emerge. The exhibition invites the audience to ponder: How can we live at once with our differences, shared struggles, or even complicity with those we most resist? Can we still live together, happily? One of the most searing romances of the 1990s, Wong Kar Wai’s “Happy Together” (1997), is an emotionally raw, lushly stylized portrait of a relationship in breakdown casts Hong Kong superstars Tony Leung Chiu Wai and Leslie Cheung Kwok Wing as a couple traveling through Argentina and locked in a turbulent cycle of infatuation and destructive jealousy as they break up, make up, and fall apart again and again. Setting out to depict the dynamics of a queer relationship with empathy and complexity on the cusp of the 1997 handover of Hong Kong—when the country’s LGBTQ community suddenly faced an uncertain future—Wong crafts a feverish look at the life cycle of a love affair that is by turns devastating and deliriously romantic. Shot by ace cinematographer Christopher Doyle in both luminous monochrome and luscious saturated color, “Happy Together” is an intoxicating exploration of displacement and desire that swoons with the ache and exhilaration of love at its heart-tearing extremes. The film was regarded as one of the best LGBT films in the New Queer Cinema movement and received critical acclaim and screened at several film festivals such as the 1997 Toronto International Film Festival; it was nominated for the Palme d’Or and won Best Director at the 1997 Cannes Film Festival. In 2022, Happy Together was ranked the 225th greatest film of all time in the Sight & Sound critics’ poll. In 2016, the film was ranked the 3rd greatest LGBT film of all time in the British Film Institute poll.[9] In 2018, it was ranked the 71st greatest foreign-language film of all time in the BBC poll.

Participating Artists: Nadim Abbas, Luis Chan, Luke Ching, Chu Ming Silveira, Abraham Cruzvillegas, Mimian Hsu, Pauline Curnier Jardin & Feel Good Cooperative, Ocean Leung, Liao Jiaming, Pan Daijing, Beatrix Pang, Ren Hang, So Wing Po, Tang Kwong San & Yuen Nga Chi, Hong-Kai Wang, Xiyadie, Caio Yurgel, Zhou Xiaopeng & Tang Han, Bruno Zhu, and Payne Zhu

Photo: Luke Ching, Narcissist, 2024, single-channel video. Courtesy of the artist

Info: Curator: Zairong Xiang, Para Site, 22/F, Wing Wah Industrial Building, 677 King’s Road, Quarry Bay, Hong Kong, Duration: 13/12/2024-6/4/2025, Days & Hours: Wed-Sun 12:00-19:00, www.para-site.art/

Pauline Curnier Jardin & Feel Good Cooperative, Fireflies (Lucciole), 2021, 16 mm film on HD video. Courtesy of the artist and Feel Good Cooperative, with the support of Jacqui Davies/ PRIIMITIVE film, in collaboration with HKW Berlin and CRAC Occitanie.｜Pauline Curnier Jardin與Feel Good Cooperative
Pauline Curnier Jardin & Feel Good Cooperative, Fireflies (Lucciole), 2021, 16 mm film on HD video. Courtesy of the artist and Feel Good Cooperative, with the support of Jacqui Davies/ PRIIMITIVE film, in collaboration with HKW Berlin and CRAC Occitanie.｜Pauline Curnier Jardin與Feel Good Cooperative

 

 

Ocean Leung, Double Happiness, 2020, two burnt plastic chairs. Courtesy of the artist. Photo: South Ho
Ocean Leung, Double Happiness, 2020, two burnt plastic chairs. Courtesy of the artist. Photo: South Ho

 

 

Left: Bruno Zhu, Call me, 2023–2026. Courtesy of the artist｜Bruno ZhuRight: Liao Jiaming, The Intouchable, 2021, mixed media installation. Courtesy of the artist
Left: Bruno Zhu, Call me, 2023–2026. Courtesy of the artist｜Bruno Zhu
Right: Liao Jiaming, The Intouchable, 2021, mixed media installation. Courtesy of the artist

 

 

Ren Hang, Untitled 46, 2012. Courtesy of Blindspot Gallery.
Ren Hang, Untitled 46, 2012. Courtesy of Blindspot Gallery