How connecting with an interactive artwork in a Hong Kong tram changed the life of Art Basel director
- Contemporary artist Kingsley Ng turned two Hong Kong trams into camera obscuras, showing reversed images on their interiors while playing extracts from a novel
- When Angelle Siyang-Le, director of Art Basel Hong Kong, took the 25-minute ride on one of the trams in 2017, it had a profound effect on her
Hong Kong contemporary artist Kingsley Ng, whose community-oriented work often seeks to shed light on local culture, did so quite literally with Twenty Five Minutes Older (Art Basel Hong Kong Edition) (2017), a reworking of a piece from 2016 that saw two trams turned into moving camera obscuras, displaying reversed images of street life on their interior walls, accompanied by spoken extracts from a Liu Yichang novel.
Angelle Siyang-Le, director of Art Basel Hong Kong, tells Richard Lord how it changed her life.
I joined Art Basel in 2012 and was regional head of gallery relations [in 2017]. I was event manager for this particular installation, but I was helping to promote works to galleries at the time.
Kingsley Ng does a lot of works that are really integrated into the community. He brings installations that are open to the public, that people can really immerse themselves in. He’s quite different from a lot of artists we normally encounter in an art fair environment: he offers an experience rather than just visually presenting his work to you.
In 2017, Art Basel Hong Kong was starting to reach its peak. Hong Kong at the time was so vibrant.
Everyone comes to Hong Kong to experience the organised chaos. The pace is so fast – then in the middle of the city, there’s this tram acting as an art experience.
