10 Questions with Kwong Kwok Wai

As a former journalist, Kwong Kwok Wai changed paths in becoming a painter, alongside the change of the city, from being a British colony to returning to Chinese sovereignty.

Kwong is a multi-disciplinary artist who focuses on oil painting and fiction writing. After learning the basics from art teachers, he developed his own artistic approach while serving in the journalistic field for 30 years. After witnessing and reporting the ups and downs of Hong Kong, he quitted his job as an Executive Producer in a TV news channel by the end of 2018 so that he could fully devote his time and attention to the pursuit of arts.

Kwong was an alumnus of the Vermont Studio Center Residency Program with VSC Merit Grants. As an award-winning artist, his work was featured in international and local exhibitions, galleries, and publications, as well as online art projects.

walterkwong.hk | @kwongkwokwai

ARTIST STATEMENT

Abstractions provide possibilities and uncertainty. This unsteadiness is also how Kwong Kwok Wai feels about the times and places in which he lives.

Like many ordinary Hong Kong people, Kwong would describe his life as segmented into two periods: Colonial rule and Chinese sovereignty. The use of abstractions would best capture the fluidity of this historical phase.

He usually starts with concepts in his painting process, and concepts are converted into symbols. With abstractions suggestive of the social environments and past events, he tries to build up a connection between contemporary art and memories, history and his community.
Recently he has been experimenting with a new way to portray history. Adopting a metaphorical approach, he used 'maps' as a symbol of history, of the collective biography of the people in town. Kwok Wai has always liked studying atlas and drawing maps of some imaginary places since childhood. The contour lines and map symbols are fascinating to him. Maps take him on some sort of spiritual journey to the unknown.

In the series titled "The Map of A Myth", Kwong took reference to local maps to arouse sentiments towards his hometown. A pictorial collage of maps indicates the man-and-place relationship and the historical phase before and after the handover. It is the local history displayed from an alternative perspective, a window into the future.
As an interdisciplinary artist, Kwong tried out his ideas in site-specific projects too. In "Hide and Seek Art Game", exhibits were shown in a way indicative of the socio-political situation.

INTERVIEW

You worked as a journalist and TV producer for many years before turning to painting as your main career. Tell us a little bit about your background and how you got interested in art. 

I joined the media industry a few years before Hong Kong returned to Chinese rule in 1997. When I was covering some historical events in the transitional period, I often wondered if I could document these happenings in paintings. "Handover, what's this have to do with me?" I keep asking myself questions like this. I ponder over the motif of the nature of the existence of individuals against the context of history, and people's relation with their memories. Life as a reporter provides me with the raw materials for this philosophical inquiry.
I have been interested in painting since childhood. Picasso, my favorite artist, created Guernica during the Spanish Civil War. It's a masterpiece!

How would you define yourself as an artist nowadays? And how did your art evolve over the years?

There are many kinds of art. I always think of myself as one of those cave artists in the prehistoric period who made marks on a surface so as to remember something, for recollection and rethinking.
When figuring out my relationship with art, I remembered a painting I saw while covering news in Vancouver nearly 20 years ago. Looking into a closed gallery, I saw a half-figurative and half-abstract face on a painting. I didn't know if it was a he or she. I didn't know if it was a portrait of a person with a name. Maybe I was just looking at my own lost face. 
In a sense, it's been a journey of searching for that unknown face. When I was younger, I used to paint in a more representational approach, depicting some objects, some settings. But as I keep on working, I find abstraction more effective in connecting the outer environments with my inner world. 

You are a multi-disciplinary artist who works with oil painting and fiction writing. What are the main differences and similarities between these two mediums? And how do you approach each one? 

I would say writing is more like talking to a friend, more informative and analytical. Painting is more like being with someone, not talking but just holding hands. It's more sentimental, something beyond words.
But what's in common is the statement I intend to put forward. Somehow it's like when I have too many vegetables, a piece of steak would bring me to heaven!

Your paintings are mostly abstract and reflect the fluidity and uncertainty of your physical and social surroundings. How did you come up with this idea? And how do you transfer it onto the canvas?

HK is a fast-growing and constantly changing city. The changes are not only the physical landscape but the ways of life, the social norms, beliefs, and values which define the Hongkongers. It's an issue of identity, of who I am. Changes make things so uncertain. 
People grow old with wrinkles and lines emerging on their faces. But what is the 'face' of a place, of a community? Then I think of maps. The lines and symbols jot down not only the development of the city but the memories of the people.
The feeling is even stronger when looking into old aerial photos of the city. Those are photos of the real world. At that very moment, when the shutter was clicked, there were people on every street, appearing as tiny small dots. 

"In the ambiguity of the blurred image of the old aerial photos, I found individuals. An existence that's hard to define. I remembered there was a set of aerial photos taken in the year (when) my elder brother was born, a time (when) I wasn't existing, my mum and dad were still young. When I looked into the faded photos, in the process of trying to spot my old home on this street or the other, I started to anticipate what the future would be, and this I couldn't tell.
That's why I started painting maps."

As a resident of Hong Kong, you have witnessed major changes throughout your life, which impacted your work. How much did painting help you process and cope with those changes? 

We are living in a time of changes and uncertainty. Things that happened around us, including social unrest, waves of emigration, and friends and family members leaving, brought me striking revelations. And above all, I found it was time to leave the industry, which was the first and only occupation I ever had. Having been a journalist for 30 years, I quit my job as an Executive Producer on a local TV channel, and it all came to an end.

"It's like memoirs at a personal level and the community level. Painting is a dual process of confirming and questioning the validity of memories, values, and perception of happenings. 
In a way, I'm just painting question marks. Why do I paint abstract? Maybe (it's because) I'm still thinking, still figuring out what to do next. I'm trying to borrow some space, an unknown domain, between those marks and color blocks on the canvas for more thinking."

Where do you find inspiration for your work nowadays, and what is your creative process like? 

Everything starts with the issues, and questions in mind. These questions are usually related to some concepts, and usually these concepts ignite some visual symbols, such as 'vines', 'numbers', and 'street maps'. As it's related to the ever-changing socio-political environments, new inspirations would be induced. This keeps me searching for new symbols for the new questions. In a way, it's like doing news!

Let's talk about your series "Hide and Seek Art Game." What was your aim with this series? And how did you structure the project?

"Hide and Seek Art Game" is about 'hiding', hiding away the subject matter. I think it's easier to hide items in a site-specific project.
Negligence may be intentional or unintended. We see something important but ignore it or are not aware of it. The idea of the project was to transform this state into an art form, a way of displaying items so that the exhibition itself became an artwork. 
The exhibition was held in a bookshop-cafe-cinema complex. I painted some of the dining chairs and matched them with normal unpainted dining tables. The visitors saw them, maybe even sat on them, but were not aware they were exhibits. I made several books and put them on the shelves. The buyers walked among the bookcases without knowing they had already entered an exhibition. It would be the moment of opening a handmade book that they realized they were part of the show.

Over the past couple of years, we collectively experienced major changes in the art world, from the stop due to the pandemic to the rise of crypto art and NFTs. Do you find any positive change in people's approach to art now? 

The recent trend in the art world is to establish crossovers with technology. Being the most eye-catching example, NFTs permit a lot more possibilities for future creations, much much more than just scanning and encrypting a piece of artwork. For centuries, fine art and science have been standing opposite each other. But during the pandemic, I witnessed an evolution has kicked off, from contradiction to harmony. I can't foretell what the result will be, but I think this trend is unstoppable.

Are you working on any new projects right now? Any exciting series or collaboration you would like to share with our readers?

I've mentioned painting maps before, and that's the project I focus on at the moment.
When I was a child, I liked studying the atlas very much. I spent hours drawing maps of some imaginary places. I found the contour lines and map symbols fascinating. They took me on some sort of spiritual journey to the unknown.
This idea of drawing maps came back to me last summer. I looked up all the old maps of HK and the aerial photos. When I look at these old maps, with narrow and sinuous streets and village settlements here and there, it feels as if I am looking at an HK in her childhood. But when studying satellite maps in recent years, I found new reclaimed land, straight highways, flyovers, and rail routes. New city, strange faces, other minds.
There are some maps that resonate for me in particular. It's the timing. There are some moments in the course of history that carry special meanings, like the first set of aerial photos in HK, like the plan to rebuild the city after WWII. Reviewing old maps is relearning the chronicle of the city, our collective history. Looking at the 'past' will help me think about the 'future'. I conjectured what this place will look like 50 years later.