Billy Tang to Lead Hong Kong’s Para Site

After an invitation-based international selection process, Hong Kong’s art center Para Site has appointed the Shanghai-based curator and writer Billy Tang as the new executive director and curator, effective May 2022. Tang will relocate to Hong Kong, while the outgoing director Cosmin Costinas will join a state-funded cultural institution in Germany, following also his directorship at the Kathmandu Triennale 2077, which opened on February 11, and after co-curating the Romania Pavilion at the upcoming Venice Biennale, slated for April 23.

Tang’s curatorial projects and commissions focus on introducing moving-image artists, establishing new discourses, and drawing attention to the system’s flaws specific to the region. Since 2018, he has served as a senior director at Shanghai’s Rockbund Art Museum (RAM), after working as the curatorial director at the artist-run Magician Space in Beijing from 2013 to 2018. At RAM, he co-curated the solo exhibitions of John Armleder in 2021 and Tobias Rehberger in 2019. Working with Costinas, he brought two Para Site shows, “Curtain” (2021) and “An Opera for Animals” (2019), to RAM, making the collaboration possible between Hong Kong and Shanghai. His writing has been published in ArtAsiaPacific, Leap, Terremoto, and Mousse Magazine, and he has led talks and workshops at multiple universities and academies across China, Europe, and the United States.

Costinas has been Para Site’s director since 2011. For more than a decade, he has been dedicated to the center’s transformation into an international art space and initiated multiple collaborations among institutions across the Asia-Pacific regions, including RAM; Kadist; Manila’s Museum of Contemporary Art and Design; Chiang Mai’s MAIIAM Contemporary Art Museum; and Artspace Aotearoa. His projects primarily shine lights on Indigenous art, cultures of the Asia-Pacific, as well as creations by those of the marginal. At Para Site, he organized and co-curated the following shows: “Koloa: Fafine, ‘Aati, Mo e Tekinolosia / Women, Art, and Technology” (2020–21); “An Opera for Animals” (2019); “A beast, a god, and a line” (2018); “Soil and Stones, Souls and Songs” (2017); “Afterwork” (2016); solo exhibition of Sheela Gowda (2015); “Great Crescent: Art and Agitation in the 1960s—Japan, South Korea, Taiwan in Tokyo” (2015); and “A Journal of the Plague Year” (2013).

About his departure, Costinas said, “I will remain grateful to have been a witness to this incredible past decade in Hong Kong’s history, with its debates, cultural developments, and international exchanges. I am humbled by the trust and generosity of hundreds of artists, colleagues, and partners, in Hong Kong, the region, and beyond, a community that dared to imagine different paths for art, its institutions, and for broader solidarity.”

Tang also shared his vision for the institution: “Throughout its history, Para Site has always maintained its mutability in tandem with changing times. This reflexive agility and its multi-level visibility—local, regional, and international—has made it a vital and unique institution. In the late 1970s, my parents arrived in Hong Kong as refugees from Vietnam in hopes of a better future. This diasporic journey intersecting with Hong Kong’s history has always given me a strong sense of solidarity with the city and its culture. I am therefore very honoured to have this opportunity to guide the next phase of Para Site’s evolution and continue its role reflecting on today's pressing issues.”