Bad Rice: fooling the Gods

In the 1955 Hollywood movie Love is a Many Splendored Thing, set in a romanticized Hong Kong on the eve of a Communist takeover, superstitious peasant farmers shouted "bad rice, bad rice" in order to trick jealous gods into not destroying their bountiful harvest.

Borrowing from that idea, Hong Kong curator Hiram To has also deceived the gods with his exhibition "Bad Rice: fooling the Gods," a show of seven artists from Hong Kong and one from Australia that focuses on making art in the fast-changing climes of Asia.

The "badness" of the show is not only derived from the work's playful, devious nature but also from its non-mainstream approach to art.

The work ranges from large photographic tableaux to mixed media installations; however, from a city famed for its moving pictures, works on video are conspicuously absent. Most of the work comments on identity, but not Asian identity as one might expect -- instead, the artists examine their sense of fractured self.

For Choi Yan Chi's Past and Future 5: True Emotions (1998), a solitary desk of an elementary school student sits in the middle of the space. Across from it on the wall is a grid of photographed graffiti-laced desktops with scrawled missives of bilingual profanities, love messages, and sketches of comic book heroes -- basically, the jumbled thoughts and desires of Hong Kong youth, which prove to be as universal and banal as any other youth.

Nearby is Scott Redford's glaring red and yellow metal sign titled "This is not an artwork/this is a community service announcement" (1997-98) which loudly declares to no one's astonishment that "Keanu is Eurasian." As the only non-Asian in the show, Redford can easily identify with the amorphous self, divided between the East and West.

Another facet of self is gender identity and in his series "I only want you to love me" (1994), Kary Kwok photographs himself nude, masturbating and in drag. Each large direct positive print shows Kwok bandaged and bruised (by makeup), a statement on the fragility of sexual identity and the power of the gaze made inherent with the medium of photography.

Commenting on relationships -- romantic, political and linguistic -- the duo known as V.C. & K.H. present a teacart set for two -- "tea for two" -- complete with electric massager, which rests on a rubber mat inscribed with the song title "Shall we dance?" Perhaps alluding to the colonial view portrayed in Rodgers and Hammerstein's musical The King and I, the artist duo often use phrases from films and songs in their work to hint at broader meanings.

Downstairs, Wilson Shieh Ka Ho's meticulous ink on silk works mimic ancient Chinese erotic miniature paintings but his fetishized version is a commentary on the rapid commercialization of Asia: identical androgynous couples wear designer clothes, talk on cell phones and carry accessories.

Jo Law explores the spatial disorientation we experience daily in the city for her installation Mind the [Platform] Gap (1999). Three corrugated fun-house type mirrors hang on a bright yellow wall while photos of the curb are placed near an official-looking strip of yellow tape that gives the viewer a sense of standing too close to the edge of subway tracks.

In the dimly lit exhibition space, Patrick Lee's evocative, shadowy photos of a young hustler show us a seamy side of Hong Kong unknown to the average tourist. We crave, like voyeurs, to penetrate the darkness to see into this world but are frustrated that we cannot. Peering through alleyways, where one can almost smell the dank mustiness and hear the dripping pipes, Lee gives us a sense of the contemporary alienated urban condition.