| Synopsis: |
This volume offers an account of recent and current art made in Hong Kong in the years leading up to the handover of British sovereignty to China in 1997. This process differed from many other experiences of the post-colonial elsewhere in the world in that it did not end in independence but in absorption into a much larger entity with an entirely different political system. Until now, the cultural aspects of this transition have not been given the attention they deserve, apart perhaps from the analysis of film. The author addresses this by considering a wide range of media, including painting, sculpture, photography, video and installation, as well as other kinds of visual production such as architecture, fashion, graphic design and graffiti. He shows how the approach of the handover heightened a sense of local identity, and how this found expression in the politicized art that became common at the time. |