Para Site proudly presents A Journal of the Plague Year’s first stop on its international travelling schedule. This group exhibition, which originally took place in 2013 at Para Site and adjacent locations, went traveling in a slightly revised version to TheCube Project Space in Taipei, opening on Saturday 28 June, 2014.
A Journal of the Plague Year, Fear, Ghosts, Rebel, SARS, Leslie and the Hong Kong Story starts from the events that affected Hong Kong in the spring of 2003: the most significant airborne epidemic in recent years – the SARS crisis, coupled with the tragic death of pop figure and icon . The unparalleled shutdown of the city and the atomization of society in quarantined segments led to an unexpected shift in the political awareness of the Hong Kong citizenry.
This exhibition navigates through disparate but interconnected narratives and contributes to a critical discussion about recent history whose implications extend beyond Hong Kong. The fear of contamination, physiological and cultural, the anxiety of societies encountering alterities and facing their own projections and prejudices are explored through the contribution of artists of various generations, shown together with historical artifacts and pop culture ephemera.
TheCube Project Space is delighted to host A Journal of the Plague Year’s first touring stop in Asia. Taiwan and Hong Kong share many chapters of their history. This exhibition wants to serve as a start for a reflection on this shared historical background and rhetoric narratives between the two regions facing a tumultuous present and an uncertain future under the same specter.
A Journal of the Plague Year is curated by
