This exhibition of video works by artists from both Hong Kong and Chicago proposes varied looks at the city as a site of inspiration, backdrop, and transformation in a time of rapid global change. Both Chicago and Hong Kong are representative of contemporary global cities’ porousness of flows.
This exhibition asks how globalization (in its myriad manifestations) contaminates, and/or replicates the local. Although the term ‘globalization’ has been somewhat synonymous with capitalist expansionism, this exhibition wishes to displace this notion by looking at how visual culture has been both instrumental (literally) and antithetical to this characterization. In considering the specificities of the local, artists working in both these cities have much in common but also much that separate and differentiate them. By simultaneously focusing on both the ‘universality’ and the specificities of the local, wishes to open up spaces in between as sites of contestation as well as identification. Conceptually, the exhibition looks at the social/personal aspects of globalization and its ramifications as expressed through screen culture and as contained within/by the city.
—
