Hong Kong Museum of Art Brings Kingsley Ng and Angel Hui to Venice Biennale Collateral Exhibition
At the 61st Venice Biennale, a new collateral exhibition is asking visitors to look more closely at what usually slips past attention: laundry strung between buildings, a window frame, the sound of a city at night. “Fermata: Hong Kong in Venice,” curated by the Hong Kong Museum of Art (HKMoA), is on view through November 22, 2026 and features new work by Hong Kong-born artists Kingsley Ng and Angel Hui.
The exhibition is shaped in dialogue with the Biennale’s theme, “In Minor Keys,” selected by Koyo Kouoh. Rather than pursuing spectacle, the project turns toward the textures of daily life and the quiet forms of urban observation. HKMoA Director Dr. Maria Mok described Hong Kong and Venice as cities linked by more than their status as ports, calling them bound by “a shared breath.” She framed the exhibition as an invitation to slow down and notice the rhythms of the everyday.
Ng’s contribution, Laundry Nocturne (晾曬夜曲) (2026), draws on a familiar sight in both Venice and Hong Kong: clothes hung high above streets or canals. In Venice, Ng encountered the tradition of laundry suspended between buildings; in Hong Kong, he found a parallel in bamboo poles affixed to buildings for drying clothes. The work combines a projection of laundry in silhouette with a soundtrack played through a radio, creating a suspended, contemplative scene that links the two cities through shared domestic ritual.
Ng, who studied at Toronto Metropolitan University, the University of Edinburgh, and Le Fresnoy–National Studio of Contemporary Arts in France, is now an associate professor at the Academy of Visual Arts, The School of Creative Arts, Hong Kong Baptist University. His practice is known for site-specific and experiential works that transform ordinary locations into atmospheric environments.
Hui’s I Would Like to Open a Window for You (我為你打開一扇窗) (2026) takes a different route into the same territory. The installation centers on a hand-crafted iron window made in collaboration with traditional metalsmiths in Hong Kong. The work considers the act of looking out onto city life, while also folding together material craft and memory. Hui, who studied at Hong Kong Baptist University and the Central Academy of Fine Arts Beijing, often draws on Chinese cultural forms and everyday objects in ways that feel both grounded and quietly unexpected.
Together, the two artists give the Biennale collateral a measured, intimate register. Instead of treating the city as backdrop, “Fermata” treats it as a living structure of gestures, sounds, and pauses — a reminder that the most resonant contemporary art can begin with the ordinary.
