May 03, 2018

Translation(s) I-III at Osage Art Foundation Hong Kong


TRANSLATION(S) I-III AT OSAGE GALLERY HONG KONG
Curated by Zoran Poposki and Laurence Wood

Translation(s) I-III: Translating New Territories | May 11-20, 2o18 | Curators’ talk: 11 May 2018, 5 PM | Opening reception: 11 May 2018, 6 PM | Osage Gallery Hong Kong | 20 Hing Yip Street, Kwun Tong, Kowloon | www.osagegallery.com

Featured artists: Daniel Arnaldo-Roman (PRI), Justin Ascott (UK), Damon Ayers & Tess Word (HKG/USA), Lynn Book (USA), Victoria Hindley (USA), Arnold J. Kemp (USA), Jessica Ledwich (AUS), Luis Lara Malvacias (VEN/USA), Eva Petric (SLO/AUT/US), Zoran Poposki (HKG/MKD), Tang Kwok Hin (HKG), and Laurence Wood (HKG/UK).


Translation(s) I-III: Translating New Territories is a survey of the first five years of the international art project Translations(s). Curated by Zoran Poposki and Laurence Wood, the exhibition at Osage Gallery Hong Kong showcases a selection of more than 30 works of video art, painting, and drawing by 13 artists investigating translation as a key strategy of global negotiation and interchange between agents from different cultures. In the contemporary emerging network of new pathways between multiple formats of expression and communication, our daily practices, as well as our sense of self, rely on constant translation and mediation between identities and cultures. The Translation(s) project explored that ongoing process of negotiating complex cultural interplays.
Working under a curatorial concept encouraging diverse explorations and interpretations of the theme, the artists featured in the project explore perspectives of a world rapidly transforming into a global translation space by the physical movement of people, and the consequent mediation and negotiation to establish and understand new personal and collective cultures.
Background
The first edition of Translation(s) I was released in 2013 and was screened at international art festivals in Hong Kong, Slovenia, Denmark, Italy, and Canada. The second edition Translation(s) II: Translating the City was screened in 2015 in Hong Kong and Slovenia. The third edition Translation(s) III: Bodies in Transit was screened in 2017 in Slovenia and the UK.
The artists in T1 used a variety of visual approaches to translate the impact that living and working in different cultures has upon them. Simultaneously personal and universal, global and local, sometimes our contemporary lives can seem like journeys in an apparently chaotic universe, a territory which may be travelled forwards and backwards in time and space. In this changing terrain, our daily practices, and our sense of self, can rely on constant translation and mediation between identities and cultures. The project explored that ongoing process of negotiating complex cultural interplays.
T2 (Translating the City) explored urban space and place through the medium of video, employing a variety of strategies and interdisciplinary approaches, from mapping and public space performance, to the exploration of spatialized identities, cultural memory, and cultural translation. The participating artists reconsidered the city as a space of negotiation and interchange between agents from different cultures, the scene of an ongoing process of translation.
T3 (Bodies in Transit) explored one of the most topical issues of contemporaneity: the traversing of borders. Migration, immigration, and refugees, people and cultures meeting, mixing, melding or clashing, forcing collectives and individuals to come face to face with difference or similarity, and to consider questions of our underlying common humanity.
About the curators
Zoran Poposki (MFA, PhD) is a transdisciplinary artist, researcher, and educator, exploring themes of (cultural) translation, spatial epistemology and social practice. His work has been shown in numerous exhibitions, screenings and festivals worldwide.
Laurence Wood is an artist based in Hong Kong and the UK. Formerly Head of College and the Dean of Fine Art, Architecture and Further Education at the University for the Creative Arts in the South East of England, he is currently a Professor in the Department of Cultural and Creative Arts at the Education University of Hong Kong.
Acknowledgments
Osage Art Foundation / Artfirsthand / The Education University of Hong Kong.