Kwan Sheung Chi

Kwan Sheung Chi was born in Hong Kong in 1980 and received a Bachelor of
Art degree in Fine Arts from The Chinese University of Hong Kong in 2003.
Although he never participated in any major international exhibitions, Kwan
gained himself the title of “King of Hong Kong New Artist” in 2000. In 2002,
“Kwan Sheung Chi Touring Series Exhibition, Hong Kong” was showcased
in ten major exhibition venues in Hong Kong and the Hong Kong Art Centre
presented “A Retrospective of Kwan Sheung Chi.” Kwan was also a founding
member of multiple local art groups such as Hong Kong Arts Discovery
Channel (HKADC), hkPARTg (Political Art Group) and Woofer Ten. In 2009,
he was awarded the Starr Foundation Fellowship from the Asian Cultural
Council to take part in an international residency program in New York and
was the winner of the inaugural Hugo Boss Art Award at Rockbund Art
Museum in Shanghai in 2013 for his witty yet critical exploration of social and
cultural challenges. Using video, text and installation, Kwan’s conceptual and
performative work evokes these themes in a unique and subtle way.

In the year of the 10th Anniversary of the establishment of The Hong Kong Special Administrative Region of The People’s Republic of China, Kwan invited a local artist, Lee Kit, to hand-paint a HKSAR regional flag, following the detailed instructions in “The State’s Standards of The People’s Republic of China, GB16689-1996”, issued by The State Authority of Technical Monitoring. Ms. Wong Wai Yin then sewed the painted cloth into a flag. After that, Kwan asked his parents to perform a flags-raising-lowering ceremony on their home’s clothes drying rack, with the hand-painted flag and the national flags of The People’s Republic of China and The United Kingdom. In the video, the flags were continuously raised and lowered arbitrarily by the artist’s parents. The national anthem of the associated flag was played or suddenly paused while the flag was raised or lowered.