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HK Magazine

I was born in Hong Kong in 1973. We lived in Kwun Tong and left when I was eight.
I was very sick as a child. I had severe asthma.
I lived in the hospital. I was at the Catholic hospital so often they gave me a number; I was M60.
I was not only asthmatic but very clumsy. I would fall, hit my head, land in the toilet; fall down stairs and split my head open.
I’d just space out for like 20 minutes and I wouldn’t know where I was. And my Mom’d be six blocks down the road and I’d be under a table in the fish market for no reason.
Being an artist means I space out a lot and imagine things but when you’re a kid and you’re doing that it means you might get run over by a car. I still space out like when I was three but now people pay me for it.
I knew very early on that I wanted to be an artist. When she was seven my sister told my mom that she knew she had to get a good job to support me because I was going to be poor.
I spent a lot of time in bed as a kid. I watched lots of “Dynasty.” The most beautiful woman was Joan Collins. She was what I thought women were. I still love her. 

Immigrants move where their relatives are and my auntie had a small Chinese restaurant in Omaha, Nebraska. It was a poor area, so strangely, class-wise, it wasn’t that different to living in Kowloon.
I spoke English but had an accent so they put me back a grade. They thought I was retarded.
Growing up in Hong Kong you realize you’re already an outsider. As a Chinese person I never felt Chinese because of the British influence. I spoke English, Portuguese and Chinese – I never felt there was a home in any sense, so I never felt I was away from home. 

My Mom didn’t see my artwork for a while because there is a mark of a visual intensity and sexuality in it that I didn’t want her to see.
She doesn’t like the fact I draw little girls with penises fucking, but she’s glad I’m drawing them and not filming them. It was a very astute criticism from Mom.
One of my ideas of coming here is to see as many young artists as I can. You do these things to be emissaries – to return home and tell people what you’ve seen. You try to pay it forward.
Teaching is wonderful. My mom was a teacher and I learned from her. It’s an exercise in human empathy.
One of the many myths about art is that it’s very personal; it’s not true. It may come from a personal place but once you make it, it’s not for you anymore; it’s for other people.
You can’t control what people think, but at least you can get them to start thinking.
I should be taller. I think people see me they’re like "who’s this 14-year-old kid in my gallery?" The art world is quick to judge.
As caricatured as the art world can be, it’s really all about people. I always tell art students that they should travel back through time to the 13th century to see what feudal society was really like. Then they’d understand what it means to work in the 
art world.
I think artists in Hong Kong are afraid of doing something wrong but you’re not going to learn what’s wrong or right unless you do it.
In the activist world there are two types of people; those who talk and those who listen. I work with the people who listen.
I met activist group Voices in the Wilderness in Chicago 2003 and two hours later they asked me to go to Iraq with them.
I was in Baghdad for one month, right before the invasion.
I was tested emotionally – never knowing what was going to happen. I was afraid. Especially in January when there were rumors the US was going to bomb early. They thought they’d invade and in two months, it’d be over. Three years later and how wrong can they be?
We were convicted by the federal government for going to Iraq. We supplied aid and broke the sanctions. So we have to pay a US$20,000 or spend ten years in jail. But we’re never going to pay. So fuck ‘em.
I get angry every day. Four people in our government wanted this war and they got it. It’s so wrong. Who wanted this war? Not me I haven’t cried since I was 16.
Art work, if it means anything, is a barometer of the times we live in so war will be in there, other things too. Life goes on.
Would I leave the US? I’m getting my working papers for Hong Kong ready. You always want a Plan B.


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Paul Chan

Magazines

In the past three years, Paul Chan has quickly emerged from New York’s underground art scene to have his fantastical digital animations exhibited at major galleries and biennials around the world. The political activist and artist talks to Alexandra Carroll ahead of his first Hong Kong exhibition.
