The title of Tai Kwun Contemporary’s first exhibition, organized by Spring Workshop, was “Dismantling the Scaffold,” implying an active de-shrouding; a tearing away at structures; and a shedding of the temporary to reveal the concrete.

The title couldn’t have been more tailor-made for Tai Kwun. For years, the dilapidated former police station, prison and magistracy had sat under a sheet of dust, then under yellow construction nets after the Jockey Club entered into a partnership with the Hong Kong government to renovate the site. It became the center of a mild mystery when, in 2016, a fallen wall and roof delayed its opening, the image of un-provoked rubble worthy of a Pu Songling tale. (Some Hong Kongers still warn of supernatural visitations in areas once occupied by Japanese troops.) Conspiracy spiraled even more wildly when Tai Kwun decided to put on a pre-opening “testing of the site”—the invite-only, curatorially-perplexing group show “Rehearsal”—which included a series of lovely, freestanding, newly-commissioned construction lights by young artist Lee Lee Chan and a work by controversial figure Carl Andre, whose history of alleged uxoricide lingered in the air like a putrid stench. So what, then, was behind all that literal and metaphorical scaffolding of a project that carries with it all this baggage? 

The exhibition, displayed across three floors and braided together by a Herzog & de Meuron-designed concrete staircase, was a summation of Spring’s five-year program, and an introduction to a new cultural monument in the city. It featured works that, in Spring’s neutral former unit in Wong Chuk Hang or other spaces, were radically specific in their context, but within the magnanimously-sized, government-sanctioned Tai Kwun, were reframed as “a response to the rich history of the site . . . [proffering] multiple interpretations to aspects of everyday structures that underpin our reality as human beings in contemporary civil society.” Some works selected by curator Christina Li seemed conveniently, almost superficially, cherry-picked out of Spring’s past, although each was tenuously linked to the show’s themes. For example, although historically important, Ulay’s monochrome video-and-photo installation There Is a Criminal Touch to Art (Berlin Action Series) (1976)—depicting the artist robbing the Neue Nationalgalerie—ultimately seemed stiff and removed compared to newly commissioned, Hong Kong-specific works such as Killing 3000 (2018), an installation by Pak Sheung Chuen, Jaffe.T, Cathy Tsang, Grace Gut and Siumou Chow. In Killing, which encapsulates mo lei tau—a Cantonese term for something so incongruous and nonsensical that it’s humorous—’90s paraphernalia littered a long table, some connected by chains and emulating a “weapon” fashioned by a madcap character in a 1994 Stephen Chow spoof spy film. Upon closer inspection, the objects are coded and politicized with dense histories, much like Tai Kwun itself; for example, an innocuous-looking Winnie the Pooh soft toy actually references the frequent netizen comparisons between the character and China’s chairman, Xi Jinping. Each cluster also has a small tag attached, with a QR code that links to an obscure video or image that seemingly relates to some sort of ungraspable political ideology, such as a man stoically counting to 63 in Cantonese. 

Aside from the usual wall texts, a very telling disclaimer, pasted repeatedly throughout the exhibition space, declared that the Spring show was in no way a reflection of Tai Kwun or the Jockey Club’s values or perspectives. That such an abhorrent rejection of the very theme of the show existed in the same space was ironic, and made for some fun rebellions, such as Jens Haaning and Superflex’s digital visitor counter at the entrance of the building, intended to poke holes in statistic-focused annual reports and measurements of success. The installation has since been photographed numerous times on social media—often without a caption or artist mention, including by head of arts Tobias Berger himself, who might be in on the joke—exposing how we, as large masses or corporate industries, have been primed to be impressed by quantity over quality. 

One of the most memorable pieces of the show was a sweet reminder of how far Tai Kwun has come. Leung Chi Wo and Sara Wong’s fantastic restaging of The Spectacle of Space Consumption (2008/18), of which a previous iteration was performed at the 49th Venice Biennale in 2001. The performance features three dancers baking cookies in the shape of a gap in the sky between the city’s skyscrapers—gleaned from Leung’s two-part photographic work Queen × Pedder × Wyndham & Queen × Pedder × Wyndham (2001)—while shimmying to low-volume pop music. Here was something abstract that became tangible, I thought, as I nibbled on a soft and buttery offering just out of the oven. It was a promising feeling, one that felt like sky-high ambitions becoming real—something that doesn’t happen often enough.

Ysabelle Cheung is managing editor of ArtAsiaPacific.

“Dismantling the Scaffold” is on view at Tai Kwun Contemporary until August 15, 2018.

• Hong Kong