Hong Kong art space Para Site knocks through walls and blacks out windows for new annexe’s inaugural exhibition about our relationship with the past

Para Site’s annexe has opened 12 storeys below the art space’s 22nd-floor main exhibition area with ‘PS’, a series of uncomfortable works by artist Kong Chun-hei

Holes in the wall that will remain as permanent fixtures, light installations and a dust-circulating ‘snake’ symbolise the search for balance in a changing world

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One of two knocked-through walls at Para Site that form the entrances to “PS”, in the Hong Kong art space’s annexe that opened on May 11. The exhibition critiques our uneasy relationship with the past. Photo: Enid Tsui

Published: 5:15pm, 21 May 2023Updated: 4:04pm, 22 May 2023

A postscript can be a gentle closure, a satisfying epilogue confirming what was said before. But Kong Chun-hei’s “PS” is of the more disruptive and open-ended kind.

Being the inaugural exhibition for Para Site’s new annexe, it also sets the tone for what is intended to be an artist-centred, experimental play space run by the Hong Kong non-profit art institution.

The annexe is simply named “10/F Para Site” and is 12 floors below the headquarters inside an industrial building in the city’s Quarry Bay neighbourhood.

Its welcoming, bright front room is in stark contrast to Kong’s disquieting installation, which is entered through either one of the two crudely knocked-through holes in an existing wall.

The new annexe’s bright front room is in stark contrast with the foreboding installations that stand behind the broken wall. Photo: Enid Tsui

The wall, which fences off about four-fifths of the unit, is a permanent fixture designed by Hong Kong architecture firm Collective Studio.