Latest news with #KennedyTown
South China Morning Post
5 days ago
- Health
- South China Morning Post
Hong Kong artist Doris Ng explores vulnerability and disability at M+
Doris Ng Toi-yee takes out a wooden tray and shows me its contents: wooden pegs, each scrawled with handwritten notes. Some of them are simply names, like 'Marilyn', followed by three hearts. Others contain more ambiguous text: 'Truth is', 'Play', 'Hope', 'Broken', 'Inner Child'. Each one is an audience response from A Collective Imprint: Adjust the Rainbow (2025), a participatory performance that Ng staged in March at Supper Club Hong Kong , in H Queen's. (I co-founded Supper Club but was not involved in this event.) We're at Ng's studio in HART Haus in Kennedy Town, where across the space, a mess of large-scale canvases, performance props, clothes and books evoke a sense of play. In her practice, Ng is interested in vulnerability, connection and 'icebreaker' moments, what she says are embodied in the pegs she extends towards me. Later this year, these interests will take her to London, where she will begin a PhD at Central Saint Martins, studying participatory art, trust building and crip theory, a growing movement that affirms the lived experiences of people with disabilities. But before that, she is staging a performance at M+ 's Asian Avant-Garde Film Festival next weekend. Signage of Reflex #1 (2020). Photo: Jocelyn Tam What's your first memory of making art? My earliest memory is of a colouring book that revealed colours with water. It dictated outcomes, leaving little room for creativity. I grew frustrated, brushing so much water that the paper tore. I was five, and my mother bought me many colouring books. This experience planted the seeds of my desire to embrace spontaneity, push boundaries and challenge controlled frameworks in both life and art. What's your daily studio routine? I wouldn't call it a routine. It's more of a pre-studio ritual that sets the tone for my day. I start by exercising vigorously, grab some orange juice and walk up the stairs. Inside, I burn incense and keep the windows open for fresh air and white noise, no matter what the weather's like.
South China Morning Post
17-05-2025
- Entertainment
- South China Morning Post
Queer liberation of Hong Kong's burgeoning underground drag and performance scene
Wings are unfurled. Horns glint under purple lights. Figures strut and spin down a narrow runway as music throbs and cheers echo off the walls in a studio tucked away in Kennedy Town. It is a balmy Saturday night in April, and this is no ordinary costume party. Forbidden Forest Ball is a performance and queer self-expression in Hong Kong's growing underground ballroom scene, a subculture grown from the marginalised queer and transgender communities of 1970s Harlem in New York, offering sanctuary for those who feel pushed to the fringes. Advertisement 'Ballroom gave me space to be me, fully and unapologetically,' says 28-year-old Prince Kiki Sassy Savage, of the Kiki House of Sassy Savage and the Haus of Basquiat, Hong Kong's first locally founded and one of its most active ballroom collectives. (In keeping with ballroom tradition, members adopt their house name as their stage surname when performing.) Raised in a traditional Hong Kong household, where queerness was met with silence if not derision , Kiki never imagined such self-expression could be met with celebration. 'I didn't grow up with this kind of support, and now I want to pass it on.' Since launching in 2020, the house has grown into a family of 11 members, united not just by craft but by kinship. In Hong Kong, where LGBTQ rights have progressed but prejudice persists , the ballroom scene offers an alternative reality where everyone gets a chance to shine. Dino Mulan Oricci, of the Legendary Haus of Hua Mulan. Photo: Liang Yinzhen 'On that runway, you get your moment,' says Kiki. 'Even if it's just 45 seconds, that's your spotlight. You're powerful. You're free.' Advertisement For the uninitiated, the idea of balls may conjure Viennese waltzes or society galas. But in the queer scene, the term is loaded with subversion, deliberately borrowing the language of the elite to reframe acts of resistance and reimagination. Ballroom, here, is a creative battleground, as well as a safe haven, where walkers compete in categories such as Runway, Realness, Face and Performance (Vogue): where beauty, gender and identity can be reimagined on their own terms.
