James T. Hong

1/1

James T, Hong, *M.17*, 2026, Ink on vellum paper, documents, 21 × 29.7 cm, Courtesy of the artist and Empty Gallery, Supported by the Gwangju Biennale Foundation, Empty Gallery, and National Culture and Arts Foundation.
16th Gwangju Biennale Exhibition Hall(Gallery 2), Photo: Jeon Byung Cheol. © Gwangju Biennale.

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 Grand Prize (Taiwan Competition) at the Taiwan International Documentary Festival (2021); Art Matters Foundation Grant, NYC (2018), Best Documentary – Mecenat Award from the Busan International Film Festival (2018) and Best World Documentary Award at the Jihlava International Festival (2007). His work has been the subject of solo exhibitions at Empty Gallery (2024, 2019), the Jewish Museum of Vienna (2022); and Ikon Gallery (2021). Recent group exhibitions include 16th Gwangju Biennale (2026); 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:
16th Gwangju Biennale: You Must Change Your Life
September 5 – November 15, 2026
Artistic Director: Ho Tzu Nyen
Curators: Che Kyongfa, Park Gahee, and Brian Kuan Wood

PRESS:
Zian Chen, ‘On the Ground During Art Season in Korea, a Country in Flux‘, Ocula
Luan Shixuan, ‘Lightness and Heaviness’, Artforum China
Stephanie Bailey, ‘16th Gwangju Biennale, “You must change your life’, e-flux
H.G. Masters, ‘Apologies, James T. Hong at Empty Gallery‘, ArtAsiaPacific
Chris Wan Feng, ‘Apologies and Other Regrets‘, Ocula
Shuman Wang, ‘Interview with James T. Hong‘, Artforum China

James T Hong_Bio CV
DOWNLOAD pdf (391 KB)

James T Hong press archive
DOWNLOAD pdf (9.5 MB)


2026-09-18	Chan Hau Chun in I, etcetera at Kunstverein Düsseldorf, Germany
	Chan Hau Chun is participating in “I, etcetera” at Kunstverein Düsseldorf, Germany, organised by Gloria Hasnay. Other participating artists include Julie Becker, Oto Gillen, Robert Glück, Danae Io; Alex Kitnick, Doreen Mende and Fiona Vilmer. The exhibition will be on view from September 19, 2026 until January 17, 2027. At the center of the group exhibition I, etcetera is an engagement with artistic subjectivity as always processual and relational. From this premise, the exhibition also turns its attention to the host institution itself, considering the ways in which it assumes and articulates a subjectivity of its own. It asks how narrative strategies and speculative propositions, operating across artistic practices and institutional(ized) processes alike, participate in producing the relations through which the self takes form. Read more …
2026-09-11	Vunkwan Tam in Walter or You jerk you didn’t call me up at Layr, Vienna
	“Walter or You jerk you didn’t call me up”, curated by Lou von der Heyde at Layr, is on view at Layr, Vienna from September 11 through October 17, 2026. Participating artists include Kai Althoff, Larry Clark, Lili Dujourie, William Gaucher, Brook Hsu, Sergej Jensen, Oscar Kargruber, Felix Krapp-Raczek, Silke Otto-Knapp, Trevor Shimizu, Kazuyuki Takezaki, Vunkwan Tam, Evelyn Taocheng Wang, Franz West. Vunkwan Tam will be exhibiting his work Galliard, 2025. Read more …
2026-09-04	Jacqueline Kiyomi Gork, James T. Hong in 16th Gwangju Biennale
	Jacqueline Kiyomi Gork and James T. Hong are amongst the 43 artists and collectives participating in the upcoming 16th Gwangju Biennale. Titled You Must Change Your Life. This edition is led by Ho Tzu Nyen with curators Che Kyongfa, Park Gahee and Brian Kuan Wood and will run from September 5 to November 15. The biennale takes its title from the famous final line of a 1908 poem by Rainer Maria Rilke, in which a viewer confronts a broken ancient statue and suddenly finds their way of seeing overturned. Perspectives and positions shift, and you realize that we can’t go on as before. I must change. Gork will be presenting a labyrinthine installation and multi-channel techno composition Not Exactly BPM (Variation Rrose) (2026). The work is a deconstructed club environment made up of machines, air blowers, and feedback. The environment (as well as our bodies) moves to a hypnotic soundtrack of kick drums and phase-shifting loops by collaborator and psychoacoustic dancefloor androgyne Rrose. Hong will be presenting a newly expanded version of his film Apologies (2012-ongoing), a compilation of modern political apologies, which Hong describes as “a timeline of modern political progress as unrepentant recidivism and contrite repetition.” As an ongoing work in progress approaching eleven hours in length, the film has grown into a giant documentary repository, adding further instances of political regret each year. In addition to being presented inside the main exhibition, it will also be projected onto the facade of the Gwangju Biennale building every evening during the exhibition’s duration.  Hong will also exhibit M.17 (2026), a series of 17 drawings accompanied declassified documents. The work’s title comes from the only name given to a test subject in Unit 731, the occupying Imperial Japanese military’s notorious covert site in Harbin, in Northeastern China, where they tested biological and chemical weapons on human subjects between 1933 and 1945. After Japan’s surrender at the close of World War II, the United States offered amnesty to Unit 731 scientists in exchange for their research. Hong has a longstanding interest in the atrocities committed at Unit 731, and through his research he obtained copies of the documents submitted to the US government by its scientists. Read more …
2026-08-26	Jacqueline Kiyomi Gork in 2026 Converge 45 triennial Here, To you, Now
	Jacqueline Kiyomi Gork is participating in the Converge 45 triennial, titled Here, To you, Now, organised by Lumi Tan. The opening celebrations for the triennial will take place August 27–30, 2026. For the Triennial, she presents Variations in Mass 4, a monumental, “breathing” inflatable sculpture on the roof of PSU’s Schnitzer School of Art + Art History + Design building. Modeled after a mid-century Japanese garden lantern from her own family history, the work meditates on cultural transmission and the idea of authenticity. Accompanied by a sound piece recorded at Portland Japanese Garden and composed with musician Liz Harris (aka Grouper), the inflatable oscillates between animation and collapse, challenging perceptions of permanence and the circulation of personal history in public space.⁣ The work will remain on view until 2027, more details to be announced soon. Gallery address: Portland State University ⁣ Schnitzer School of Art 1981 SW Broadway, Portland, OR ⁣ Read more …
2026-07-04	Tishan Hsu in Wetware, Rain Rain, curated by Spine
	The exhibition Wetware, curated by Spine (Aidan Chisholm and Laura Audrey Brown), opens on July 9, and runs through August 7, 2026. Participating artists include Alison Knowles, Aviva Silverman, Bettina, Early Shinada, Faith Icecold, Khia Hong, Patty Chang, Rafael Sánchez and Tishan Hsu. The exhibition is hosted by RAINRAIN Gallery in New York. Read more …
2026-06-22	Catherine Christer Hennix's Cosmological Critique at Badischer Kunstverein
	The exhibition Cosmological Critique showcases the complex work of Catherine Christer Hennix (1948, Stockholm – 2023, Istanbul), whose five decades of artistic activity involved the amalgamation of music, mathematics, language and spirituality into a singular space of thought. Hennix conceived her works as ‘semiotical objects’ – such as signs, diagrams and texts, as well as sound and light compositions – through which she sought to investigate and to transform perception and the processes of meaning generation. Beginning in the late 1960s, and with points of departure in the experimental music scenes of Stockholm and New York, Hennix developed an approach that shifted between minimalist composition, mathematical research and metaphysical speculation. Formative for her development were encounters with La Monte Young, Marian Zazeela and Pandit Pran Nath, whose ideas about time, sound and continuity had a lasting influence. In parallel, she was intensively preoccupied with the philosophical, logical and linguistic bases of mathematics, and was, among other things, a guest professor at the first lab for artificial intelligence at MIT. Cosmological Critique is the most extensive presentation of this artist to date, and ranges from early graphic scores and immersive installations to abstract Nō dramas, paintings and sculptures, as well as questions of transfeminist aesthetics and politics. Recurring concepts drawn from mathematics and psychoanalysis function here less as references, and instead actually structure the works themselves. These are interpretable as manifestations of a radical conceptual and critical project that interweaves poetic, mathematical, musical and artistic forms of knowing to transcend Western categories of thought and medial boundaries in pursuit of cosmic perspectives. Curated by Anja Casser, Lawrence Kumpf and Moritz Nebenführ The exhibition is produced in collaboration with Malmö Konsthall, The Etymon Foundation (New York) and Empty Gallery (Hong Kong) as well as Marcus Pal as artistic advisor. Funded by the German Federal Cultural Foundation and the Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media. Read more …
2026-06-19	Doris Guo in Springbrett: Dark Adaptation at Kistefos Museum, Norway
	This year’s Springboard exhibition, Dark Adaptation, is curated by Abirami Logendran. Bringing together works by Jack Whitten, Doris Guo, Glenn Ligon, Solveig Lønseth, Lorna Simpson, and Wolfgang Tillmans, the exhibition explores visibility, perception, and opacity. Through painting, photography, video, printmaking, and installation, the artists investigate how meaning emerges in the encounter between artwork and viewer. Participating artists include Jack Whitten, Doris Guo, Glenn Ligon, Solveig Lønseth, Lorna Simpson, and Wolfgang Tillmans. The exhibition will be on view until September 20th, 2026. Read more …
2026-05-05	Taro Masushio, Ulrik
	Taro Masushio’s second solo exhibition, Goldfish, at Ulrik; New York will be on view from May 9 through June 12. The gallery will host an opening reception from on Friday, May 15, 6-9pm. For further details, visit the gallery’s Instagram at the link below. Read more …
2026-05-05	Doris Guo, Still Human at 15 Orient
	Doris Guo will open her first solo exhibition at 15 Orient in New York City on Friday, May 8, from 6 through 9pm: 15 Orient presents “Still Human”, a solo-exhibition by Doris Guo. Centered on a large slideshow video projection, the show features a constellation of new opaque projector sculptures, cast foam supports, imploded metal compositions, and photographs of an elusive mountain. Read more …
2026-04-28	Empty Gallery in The Art Journal
	Empty Gallery was recently featured in the April 2026 issue of The Art Journal in a feature on art initiatives in the Southern district of Hong Kong island, written by Rachel Yang.