James T. Hong

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Installation view, *Apologies* (2012 – ongoing), *Apologies and Other Regrets*, Empty Gallery, June 8 – August 17, 2024.

Installation view, *Stabbed in the Back* (2023 – ongoing), *Apologies and Other Regrets*, Empty Gallery, June 8 – August 17, 2024.

Installation view of *De Anima* in the 14th Gwangju Biennale, April 7 – July 9, 2023.

James T. Hong, *Apologies v.2016.2* at Jewish Museum of Vienna, 2022

*Three Arguments About the Opium* War (2015), Art Basel Hong Kong, 2022

*De Anima*, 2021, two-channel video installation

Image courtesy of the artist.

*EMP*, 2020, watercolor on paper

Image courtesy of the artist.

*Opening Closing Forgetting* (still), 2018

Image courtesy of the artist.

*Terra Nullius or: How to be a Nationalist* (still), 2015

Image courtesy of the artist.

James T. Hong is a Taiwanese-American artist and filmmaker whose research-based practice interrogates the metaphysics of truth, navigating the intersection of epistemological, ethical, and socio-political questions. While best known for his experimental and essayistic films, his practice has recently expanded into sculpture. Hong critically traces the racialized power mechanisms that underpin processes of knowledge production and dissemination, and how they perpetuate historical trauma and contemporary injustice in America and East Asia.

Hong was awarded the Best World Documentary Award at the Jihlava International Festival (2007); Art Matters Foundation Grant, NYC (2018), and Best Documentary – Mecenat Award from the Busan International Film Festival (2018). His work has been the subject of solo exhibitions at the Jewish Museum of Vienna (2022); Ikon Gallery (2021) and Empty Gallery (2024, 2019). Recent group exhibitions include Bonner Kunstverein (2024); the Haus der Kulturen der Welt (2022, 2017); Center Pompidou Metz (2021); 12th Taipei Biennial (2020); the Museum of Contemporary Art, Belgrade, Serbia (2018).

CURRENT:

Apologies and Other Regrets
Empty Gallery
June 8 – August 17, 2024

It is light, Bonner Kunstverein
Curated by Fatima Hellberg
May 11 – July 28, 2024

PRESS:

Shuman Wang, ‘Interview with James T. Hong‘, Artforum China
Mabel Lui, ‘From the Pope to Macron, world leaders’ apologies compiled for artist’s Hong Kong show‘, South China Morning Post

Melanie Pocock, ‘The philosophical films of James T. Hong’, Ikon Gallery

James T Hong_Bio CV
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James T Hong press archive
DOWNLOAD pdf (9.0 MB)


2024-06-28	Tishan Hsu on the High Line, New York
	Two new sculptures by Tishan Hsu, car-grass-screen-2 and car-body-screen-2 are now on view at the High Line New York, at at Little W 12th St. and Washington St. Hsu first began making these resin-wrapped foam sculptures at the 58th Carnegie International in 2022. The works will be on view through April 2025, and the commissioning curator is Cecilia Alemani. Read more …
2024-06-14	Doris Guo in All Good Things, Hulias, Norway
	“All Good Things” at Hulias Norway will be on view through July 7 and is open from 13:00 to 16:00 every Saturday and Sunday during the exhibition. Participating artists include Spencer Lai (AU), Maria Gorodeckaya (RU,GB), Giles Thackway (AU), Doris Guo (US) and Ewa Poniatowska (PL). Curated by Marie-Alix Isdahl, the exhibition features a projector artwork work by Doris Guo titled Kitchen Bathroom Confusion (2023). Read more …
2024-05-22	Le Contre-Ciel in Frieze Magazine
	Stephanie Bailey on Le Contre-Ciel in Frieze Magazine: “Named after 20th-century French surrealist René Daumal’s writings on death as regenerative negation, ‘Le Contre-Ciel’ (The Counter Heaven) at Empty Gallery, Hong Kong, is more revelation than exhibition. Organized by Olivia Shao, the group show opens with the meditative sounds of a gong chiming over softly clanging cymbals. These emanate from a work that is not yet visible: Francis Alÿs’s Cuentos Patrióticos (Patriotic Tales, 1997), a black and white video that shows the artist leading sheep in single file around a giant flagpole in the centre of Zócalo, Mexico City’s main square, to form a looping circle. The performance references an event that took place in 1968, amid a student-led Mexican movement for political change, when civil servants ordered to show support for the government bleated in the square in protest. The work’s presence plays with the meaning of ‘The Counter Heaven’ in the context of Hong Kong, given that Chinese emperors believed they had the divine right to rule due to the Mandate of Heaven.” Read more …
2024-05-08	James T. Hong at Bonner Kunstverein
	It is light is a group exhibition featuring Ada Frände, Blalla W. Hallmann, Julia Heyward, James T. Hong, Udo Lefin, Rachel Reupke, Bernard Szajner, Camilla Wills, curated by Fatima Hellberg. It is light is a two-part exhibition realised between Bonner Kunstverein and Haus Mödrath – Räume für Kunst, from May 11 – July 28, 2024. Opening: Friday 10 May, from 7pm Read more …
2024-05-08	Raha Raissnia at Taipei Dangdai
	Raha Raissnia is participating in Before Thunders, May 10-12 at Taipei Dangdai: For the first time, Taipei Dangdai Art & Ideas will present a curated exhibition within the fair co-hosted by the Ministry of Culture. Titled “Before Thunders: An Exhibition of Taiwanese Artists” the exhibition focuses on the work of a dozen largely mid-career artists selected by four curators who will participate in the Ideas Forum 2024: Zian Chen, Martin Germann, Esther Lu, and Wong Binghao. This project supports the fair’s core goal of bringing art from Taiwan from across the spectrum—from those represented by the leading galleries participating in the fair to those working largely outside the market—to greater international attention and demonstrates the fair’s ongoing interest in building partnerships with public and private organizations throughout Taiwan’s vibrant art scene.
2024-05-03	Raha Raissnia at Galerie Khoshbakht
	Raha Raissnia’s Untitled (2018) is on view at Nevers, Galerie Khoskbakht, Cologne, May 4 through 30. Galerie Khoshbakht is delighted to announce Nevers, an exhibition with works by Beth Collar, Keta Gavasheli, Nicole Gravier, Raha Raissnia and Ulrike Schulze. Nevers brings together artists who deal with the question of the representable and the unrepresentable, who negotiate the interior and exterior of reality in relation to their media. Sometimes it seems that reality is too big to be experienced as a whole, that it is perhaps also too cruel to want to experience it directly. Thus, each artist explores the question of representation and the representable, the articulable, in their own unique way by using means of alienation and translation. Read more …
2024-04-27	Doris Guo at Artists Space, New York
	Opening May 23 through August 10: Artists Space is pleased to present an exhibition of new and recent work by Doris Guo, Matthew Langan-Peck, Isabelle Frances McGuire, and Ruben Ulises Rodriguez Montoya. Read more …
2024-04-06	Jes Fan in Weight of Mind, Hessel Museum of Art
	Artists: Kaari Upson, Jes Fan, and Lucas Blalock Dates: April 6 – May 26, 2024 Weight of Mind at Hessel Museum of Art, Bard College questions how memory is embodied and given new form in the works of three artists: Kaari Upson, Jes Fan, and Lucas Blalock. In divergent ways, their works—across sculpture and photography—examine how past experiences are transformed through different methods of translation, from molding and casting to pigmentation to digital manipulation. By thickening fragmented memories or past sensations, the artists invite the audience to examine moments of change that otherwise would be fleeting. The exhibition is curated by Thalia Stefaniuk. Read more …
2024-03-29	Artsy: The 10 Best Booths at Art Basel Hong Kong 2024
	Payal Uttam in Artsy: “Amid the glistening neon of Hong Kong’s iconic skyline this week, the M+ Museum façade was alight with an evocative black-and-white film by Yang Fudong—just one of many signs that Art Basel Hong Kong, and a flurry of other art events, had taken over the city… The first thing that catches your eye at Hong Kong–based Empty Gallery’s booth are Jes Fan’s sensuous organic sculptures made of hand-blown glass and carved gypsum. A rising star in the international art scene, Fan is known for taking CT scans of his body and creating printed casts of body parts to create his work. Another highlight of the booth is Jacqueline Kiyomi Gork’s slick kimono-shaped wall sculpture made of stitched poured silicone, a sound-buffering material. The work functions as a “noise blanket” with the thick textured surface deflecting sound. Taiwan-based Iranian American artist Raha Raissnia’s monumental oil painting inspired by experimental cinema is also a standout. Painted using the traditional method of grisaille, her ethereal painting appears to almost quiver and vibrate.” Read more …
2024-03-24	Jacqueline Kiyomi Gork interviewed for BOMB
	Sound art as performance, choreography, and object. Jacqueline Kiyomi Gork by Byron Westbrook in BOMB: “Jacqueline Kiyomi Gork’s work occupies a singular space at a nexus of visual arts and sound composition. With a multifaceted sphere of influences that includes textiles, club music, archaeoacoustics, and choreography, she has one of the most rigorous and unique practices in what is often termed sound art. Her work manifests as a generous space for audience exploration, where sculpture, sound, and interactive installation environments live and breathe in a symbiotic collaboration with viewer and architecture. Kiyomi Gork’s first East Coast institutional solo exhibition, Poems of Electronic Air, at Harvard University’s Carpenter Center presents an expansive survey of her ideas and work. In the conversation below, I speak with her about concepts explored in the show, including participation, feedback systems, surveillance, choreography, and sonic forms as expressive metaphor.” —Byron Westbrook Read more …

Sound art as performance, choreography, and object. Jacqueline Kiyomi Gork by Byron Westbrook in BOMB:

Shuman Wang, ‘Interview with James T. Hong‘, Artforum China Mabel Lui, ‘From the Pope to Macron, world leaders’ apologies compiled for artist’s Hong Kong show‘, South China Morning Post

Shuman Wang, ‘Interview with James T. Hong‘, Artforum China
Mabel Lui, ‘From the Pope to Macron, world leaders’ apologies compiled for artist’s Hong Kong show‘, South China Morning Post