‘Sounding Lines’ Closing Events

Date: Jul 27, 2024
Time: 12:00 pm – 3:00 pm
RSVP: https://forms.gle/MARdqss6Rry95y568

Installation view of Aki Sasamoto: ‘Sounding Lines’, 2024, Para Site, Hong Kong. Photo: Studio Lights On｜笹本晃：「測深線」展覽現場，2024年，香港Para Site藝術空間。攝影：Studio Lights On。

Join us for two unique events that will celebrate and mark the conclusion of Aki Sasamoto’s first solo exhibition in Hong Kong, ‘Sounding Lines’, at Para Site.

RSVP recommended here.

Aki Sasamoto in Conversation with Ngaiming Mok
12-1pm
Para Site, 10B

This event brings together the artist in conversation with acclaimed mathematician Prof Ngaiming Mok, whose wide-ranging interests encompass mathematics, linguistics, languages, and poetry. This discussion will delve into the intersection between art and mathematics, exploring the commonalities between the artist’s and the mathematician’s experimental approaches, and their shared interests in creative exploration and cross-disciplinary dialogue.

Sasamoto’s diverse practice, which includes performances, installations, and moving image, often incorporates concepts from mathematics. Algebraic equations, graphs, and geometric forms are translated into affective experiences that engage both the mind and the body, pushing the boundaries between the abstract and the tangible.

The artist’s connection to diverse minds and sensibilities, spanning musicians, choreographers, mathematicians and engineers, has been instrumental in shaping her dynamic, multi-dimensional works.

The conversation will be conducted in English.

‘Sounding Lines’: Performance by Aki Sasamoto
2:30pm
Para Site, 22/F

The exhibition marks the first major solo presentation of Sasamoto’s experimental practice in Hong Kong. Suspended throughout the gallery’s architecture, Sounding Lines (2024) is an intricate web of metal springs connected to a series of ‘lures’. Mobile sculptures hang in the air and mimic the function of angling baits, capturing the viewers’ attention with their reflections of light, motion, and vibrant colours. Within this setting, Sasamoto has been developing a series of improvised performances throughout the course of the exhibition. The final performance is the culmination of a new creative cycle for the artist that was developed in Hong Kong.

The performance will be in English.

About

Aki Sasamoto

Aki Sasamoto (b. 1980 in Yokohama; lives and works in New York) works in performance, sculpture, dance, and video. Her videos often develop in tandem with her performance and installation work, where improvisational performances combining spoken narrative and physical contortions unfold in a feedback loop with careful arrangements of sculpturally altered found objects and multimedia elements. Sasamoto’s institutional solo exhibitions include those at the Queens Museum, New York (2023–2024); The Kitchen, New York (2017); and SculptureCenter, New York (2016). She has participated widely in international exhibitions including the 59th Venice Biennale (2022), the Aichi Triennale (2022), the Busan Biennale (2022), the Okayama Art Summit (2022), the Kochi-Muziris Biennale (2016), and Yokohama Triennale (2008).

Prof Ngaiming Mok

Prof Ngaiming Mok is the Edmund and Peggy Tse Professor in Mathematics, Chair of Mathematics of the Department of Mathematics, and Director of the Institute of Mathematical Research (IMR) of the University of Hong Kong (HKU). He is an Academician of the Chinese Academy of Science, a Fellow of the Hong Kong Academy of Sciences, and a Fellow of the American Mathematical Society (AMS).

After graduating from high school (St Paul’s Co-ed) in Hong Kong in 1975, Prof Mok went abroad for his undergraduate studies on a scholarship at the University of Chicago. He obtained his MA from Yale in 1978 and his PhD from Stanford in 1980, and immediately embarked on his teaching and research career at Princeton University. Subsequently, he was Professor at Columbia University and University of Paris, before returning to Hong Kong in 1994 to take up a Chaired Professorship in Mathematics at HKU. He took up at HKU the Directorship of the IMR in 1999.

Prof Mok served on the Editorial Board of Inventiones Mathematicae from 2002 to 2014. He served as a member of the Fields Medal Committee for the International Congress of Mathematicians (ICM) in 2010, and was a core member for the subject panels of Algebraic and Complex Geometry in ICM 2006, and in Analysis and its Applications in ICM 2014. He served on the Selection Committee for the Shaw Prize 2023 and 2024 in Mathematical Sciences.

Prof Mok’s academic accolades include the Sloan Fellowship in 1984, the Presidential Young Investigator Award of the US in 1985, the Croucher Senior Fellowship Award of Hong Kong in 1998, the State Natural Science Award of China in 2007, the Bergman Prize of the AMS in 2009, the Chern Prize of the International Congress of Chinese Mathematicians in 2022, the Future Science Prize in Mathematics and Computer Science in 2022, the Tan Kah Kee Award in Mathematics and Physics in 2022, and, as a co-recipient, the Frontier of Science Award of the International Congress of Basic Science in 2023.

Prof Mok is a polyglot. He travels extensively to take part in professional activities and has lectured on Mathematics around the world in English, Putonghua, Cantonese, French, German and Italian. He is a lover of literature, composes poems in classical Chinese and translates his poetry into four European languages.