Project 29
Under•Line (Barcelona edition)
Curated by Jamsen Law
Artists - Au Wah Yan, Taylor Chan, Jamsen Law, Lee Suet Ying and Ivy Ma
September 9th - September 23rd, 2022.
Under•Line (Barcelona edition) is the 8th edition of this nomadic series by nProjekt. The project began in 2018 and exhibitions have travelled to Hagen, Tokyo, Rotterdam, Sydney and Trondheim, and of course its home city, Hong Kong.
Under•Line is not only an exhibition series, but also an expedition to territories of different artistic creation, production and geographical locations. The project takes different forms responding to the available elements and evolving conditions from different occasions and cultures - from fine artworks, to virtual installations and streamed happenings, to performances and engagement activities, to artist-run spaces, artist residencies and art festivals. As participating artists explore their living and creative territories, it tests its limits, as well as the subtleties of inherent undercurrents.
Through collaborating with organisations in different places and artists with different backgrounds, opportunities for research on different aspects of components for art making and the exploration of new forms of exhibition making and art engagement could be created, for all collaborators.
As the majority of collaborators from Hong Kong have extensive experiences in art education, the awareness of seeking alternatives for engagement and artistic research is always present. Similar to the purpose of other nProjekt series, no matter which approach - artist-centric, media-driven or theme-based, - the aim is to create a variety of creative conditions for collaborating art makers to take part and interact with.
Jamsen Law was born and grew up in Hong Kong. His artworks have been exhibited, presented and screened in different festivals in Europe, Asia Pacific, North and South America. In addition to festivals, such as Videobrasil International Electronic Art Festival, Transmediale Berlin and Ogaki Biennale, Jamsen has also had his solo screenings in Toronto, Tokyo, Busan and Hong Kong.
Jamsen started curating screenings for Microwave International Media Arts Festival back in 2002. Subsequently he curated educational artist-in-residence programmes and invited Asian artists to his home city for workshops, exhibitions and performances.
In 2018, in order to explore new forms of arts engagement in this new era, Jamsen set up the new art group nProjekt.*
Au Wah Yan was born in 1984 and studied fine arts in New Asia College, the Chinese University of Hong Kong. Her drawings and illustrations have been published in various media including MingPao, C for Culture, Muse, META, Mingpao Weekly and City Magazine.
From 2011 to 2013, she was a member of Woofenten. Her comic "Me1 World" has been published biweekly in "Sunday Mingpap" since 2014. In 2015, she worked as the stage designer for theatre work called "His homeland". She has also taught visual arts in HKICC Lee Shau Kee School of Creativity over the years.
Taylor Chan is a BA (Hons) graduate of the Chinese University of Hong Kong. His works evolve around mix-media installations, sculptures and paintings.
Relying on repeated self-doubt, he naturally sets himself within endless boundaries. He hates being stereotyped, the sense of stillness and emptiness. He thinks with language and text as human beings do, yet often gets carried away by sight.
Lee Suet-ying received her master's degree in visual art from Hong Kong Baptist University. Her recent works show her interest in how people create a sense of place in different kinds of space. She tries to extend the spirit of humanity by “generating experience” based on the daily observations of places and objects. By using art as a medium to present what she feels about living in this city, she thereby creates in the urban space the meaning of life/living.
In 2015 she participated in the French May Arts Festival - Living Sound: A sound art exhibition and World & Heaven, and Hong Kong Sculpture Biennial in 2016.
Ivy Ma is a Hong Kong artist working with drawings, paintings, photography, and mixed-media installation. She has studied fine art in Hong Kong and the United Kingdom, and has held a number of solo exhibitions in Hong Kong.
She was an Asian Cultural Council grantee in 2007 and received Hong Kong Contemporary Art Awards, Young Artist Award in 2012. Her series of works 'Last Year' (2015) was acquired by the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA) in 2020.
* Established in 2018, nProjket aims to explore new approaches for artistic and curatorial research, art engagement and exhibitions. The debut project, Under•Line, has been developed with a simple goal, to seek exhibition-making alternatives and intentionally find artist-run spaces around the globe to create environment-responsive exhibitions.
The second series, Non-Solo, was rolled out in the summer of 2021, exploring cross-disciplinary ways to create solo exhibitions, not only solo.
Two new series, Seeds of Remembrance and Inter•Phase, exploring diasporic/nomadic nostalgia and the border between culture and nature, will begin in 2022.
Under•Line (Barcelona edition) was made possible with the generous support of nProjekt and Hong Kong Arts Development Council.
