Issue

Up Close: Richard Hawkins

Up Close: Richard Hawkins
Installation view of Richard Hawkins’s Head of a Dancer, 2025, plaster cast, wig hair, artificial cobwebs on pillow, tattered kimono, 17 × 40 × 40 cm, at Empty Gallery, Hong Kong, 2025. Photo by Felix S.C. Wong. Courtesy the artist and Empty Gallery.

Walking into Richard Hawkins’s exhibition felt like stumbling into a fever dream simultaneously nightmarish and erotic. At Hong Kong’s Empty Gallery, “The Garden of Loved Ones” presented a series of collages, videos, and sculptures centering on one of Hawkins’s long-standing obsessions: Tatsumi Hijikata, founder of the Japanese Butoh dance, whose ashen, convulsing body pervaded the artworks in the presentation.