Artist Christopher K. Ho reflects on identity, the meaning of home and the nature of the nation state
- Christopher K. Ho, US-raised but born in Hong Kong, uses a mock-up of a Cathay Pacific airliner cabin to explore ideas about identity and reverse migration
- The artist’s newest project, a response to rising nationalism, explores the idea of a multiverse as a model for nation states with diverse populations
Finding acceptance in a different country is something artist Christopher K. Ho can relate to. The 46-year-old was born in Hong Kong and moved to the United States when he was four. The issues of belonging and identity run through his work, and are more relevant than ever in a world, and a city, that have become increasingly polarised.
Since Donald Trump was elected US president in November 2016, Ho has been spending a lot more time in Hong Kong. While he loves the city and considers it home (though he also spends time in Colorado and New York), the transition has not been seamless.
“I was seriously experimenting with moving back to Hong Kong, and was committed to the idea,” Ho recalls, “but ... I’ve always felt I had to earn my belonging.”
The way he sees it, every Hong Kong native has to appear more British or more Chinese depending on who they are interacting with.
Ho created CX888 for his 2018 summer residency at de Sarthe Gallery in Wong Chuk Hang. It explored identity in the context of the Asian diaspora and reverse migration. CX888, the daily Cathay Pacific flight between Vancouver and Hong Kong, was the one the artist would take to come back to the city.
The work was adapted for, and is on view at, the Ullens Centre for Contemporary Art in Beijing until the end of this month as part of “Meditations in an Emergency”, an exhibition that, having opened in the midst of a pandemic and political uncertainty, explores the sources of global anxiety and its immediate effects.
Two aisles of reclining seats resembling those in a Cathay Pacific airliner cabin are separated by a narrow, carpeted aisle. Two screens are mounted on walls at the end of aisles playing stills from a TV show, Switched at Birth, interspersed with blank screens featuring Cathay Pacific‘s signature teal and maroon colours. CX888 elicits a feeling of nostalgia for those suffering from wanderlust while unable to travel.
“[At UCCA] the work evokes a more poetic side of longing, not quite returning home so much as to find a home,” says Ho. “I’m trying to reconceptualise what home means; the idea of it is more fluid, it’s much less to do with a nation state than it is to do with a person or people.”
The artist says now is the perfect time to revive this idea, and rethink ways of existing in a post-pandemic world. That is the starting point for an upcoming work of Ho’s in Finland – “What would it look like to restart the world after a pause?” he asks.
He sees Hong Kong and Finland as having some things in common.
“The first link between Hong Kong and Finland is that both have to negotiate between larger and more powerful neighbours or entities,” Ho explains. “During World War II and the cold war, Finland was caught between what was the USSR and the Western hegemony; it operated like Hong Kong does in the sense that it has to constantly negotiate its behaviour and identity.”
The cultural exchange project, called “So long, thanks for all the fish!” will culminate in a group exhibition in 2021.
Along with Ho, four other Hong Kong-based artists will participate – Luke Ching Chin-Wai, Angela Su, Cedric Maridet and Lam Tung-pang. The project is curated by Yeewan Koon, associate professor and chair of the Fine Arts Department at the University of Hong Kong.
“The second aspect the curator wanted to explore was that of a multiverse,” Ho says, “multiple realities existing in similar spaces. I was so disturbed by the uptick of nationalism in the US, and almost an echo effect of it around the world, a multiverse seemed to provide the possibility of a different model for nations which have diverse populations.
“I guess what I’m asking is if it’s possible to update the idea of a nation state and how to rethink systems as we go forward.”
