Sharing Bodies of Water: M+ Symposium “Art of the Pearl River Delta”
By Julee WJ Chung
Late to the game but still promising an examination of urbanization’s trajectory in the Pearl River Delta, the latest M+ Matters symposium was introduced by the museum’s deputy director and chief curator, Doryun Chong, at the Asia Society Hong Kong Center. Working in conjunction with, and actually catalyzed by, the “Canton Express” exhibition that was partially re-installed at the M+ Pavilion—the museum’s permanent presentation space at Hong Kong’s West Kowloon Cultural District—Chong described the premise of the discussion by introducing the show itself.
As reviewed by ArtAsiaPacific, “Canton Express” was the second iteration of a landmark project “Zone of Urgency (Z.O.U)” first curated by Hou Hanru at the 50th Venice Biennale in 2003. The seminal works that were exhibited in Venice looked back at the explosive urbanization and expansion of the Asia-Pacific region, and was restaged to be unpacked within its own geographical and cultural context. The exhibition also celebrated the donation of the 37 works, which were created between 1979 and 2005, to the M+ Museum by the influential Chinese collector Guan Yi in 2013. All things considered, including the area’s infrastructural changes, such as the soon-to-be completed Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macau Bridge and the high-speed Express Rail Link tying Hong Kong to Guangzhou and Shenzhen, the exhibition and symposium shifted the focus of discourse about the Pearl River Delta to the people affected by its changing landscape, and examined the region’s socioeconomic and cultural changes that are to ensue in the Pearl River Delta and Greater Bay Area of China.
