Group Exhibition Tai Kwun, Hongkong
The exhibition series Online consists of two chapters that explore how twenty-first-century art responds to the transformations of Chinese society and their global implications. Through the lenses of digital technology, global migration, logistics, and the circulation of ideas, the series examines how developments in these fields have reshaped everyday life and artistic imagination in recent years.
The first chapter, Online: Wandering in the Cloud (September 26, 2025 – January 4, 2026), investigates how technology has influenced and inspired artistic practice, opening up new creative possibilities. The second chapter, Global Supply, examines how artists depict people and landscapes shaped by rapid economic expansion and industrial transformation.
Taking 2008 as its historical point of departure, Online: Art and China after 2008 considers how the Beijing Olympic Games, the global financial crisis, and the widespread adoption of smartphones together inaugurated a new era of globalization and transnational connectivity. Although a succession of social events around the world has since challenged the grand narratives of the twenty-first century, a new era is still in the process of taking shape. Amid this uncertainty, a new generation of artists sustains social vitality through artistic practice, continually renewing memory, giving voice to individual stories, and enabling people to remain "online" in an ever-changing world.
Global Supply
Since the First Industrial Revolution in the late eighteenth century, rapid economic transformation has profoundly reshaped traditional social structures and the natural environment. Benefiting from the economic reforms initiated in the late 1970s, China has lifted more than 800 million people out of poverty. While sustained economic growth has significantly improved living standards, it has also left lasting marks on ecological systems and social structures. By the 2010s, China had become the world's largest manufacturing nation, gradually shifting toward high-tech manufacturing and consumer goods production while also emerging as a major exporter of capital, technology, and innovative brands.
Global Supply brings together contemporary artists from China and abroad whose practices engage with non-traditional media. Through installation, performance, and participatory projects, the exhibition explores the transformative impact of globalization on the environment, labor, communities, and personal histories. Against the backdrop of the transition toward a sustainable green economy in the twenty-first century, the exhibition foregrounds overlooked local narratives to examine how national and global economic development has reshaped natural and urban environments. The participating works draw upon the lived experiences of workers from diverse industries across China, revealing their personal stories, networks of friendship, and family histories. Viewed through the perspectives of people in China and the Chinese diaspora, these works reflect the ways in which human lives are intertwined with the transregional circulation of commodities, materials, and culture.
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