French artist JR has created a monumental outdoor installation for Hong Kong to celebrate the city’s Art Month this month. But the installation, which depicts a high jumper, drew criticism from several feng shui consultants and fortune tellers, who argued that the artwork resembled a person falling from afar from a building and thus projecting a bad omen.
Title Giants: stand upthe installation was unveiled this week ahead of next week’s Art Basel Hong Kong, which has its VIP days from March 21.
Commissioned by Harbor City Mall and on display until April 23 at the Ocean Terminal Deck in Tsim Sha Tsui, Kowloon, the artwork, which measures nearly 40 feet high and 40 feet wide (12 meters high and 12 meters wide), is the famed artist’s first offering in Asia from his ongoing “Giants” series.
“The gigantic art installation depicts a larger-than-life high jumper floating in mid-air next to Hong Kong’s iconic Victoria Harbor, with her body leaning gracefully and her head back against the fabulous skyline.” , says the press release. writing.
“The high jump athlete appears to be leaping off the ground and enjoying the feeling of free fall,” the press release continued, adding that the athlete’s move represented “lift off,” referring to a “Giants” installation. presented at Rio 2016. Olympic Games in Janeiro. JR also added “a touch of Hong Kong” by fusing the image with bamboo scaffolding, a construction technique considered “safer than steelwhich has been classified as intangible cultural heritage of the city.
JR, GIANTS: Stand up. Courtesy of Harbor City.
But JR’s artistic creation did not appeal to some feng shui consultants, as well as practitioners and believers in the traditional art of Chinese metaphysics and divination.
“Doesn’t that look like someone fell from a building landing on a bamboo scaffolding, and the body is pierced through by the bamboos?” asked feng shui master Po Sin in a recent video on his YouTube channel. Po Sin’s view was echoed by a recent Facebook job written by feng shui practitioner Steve Lee, who also shared a similar impression of the work. Their opinions have also been echoed by some netizens.
Feng shui is understood as the ancient Chinese study of arranging one’s environment to facilitate the positive flow of energy or bring about good fortune, and is widely adopted in interior design and architecture in Hong Kong. Some non-believers, however, have criticized it as mere superstition.
Po Sin, nevertheless, went on to say that while bamboo scaffolding is distinctive of Hong Kong, and may be aesthetically pleasing, the representation in this work by JR was not appealing. “You can have people climbing bamboo scaffolding, but not someone landing on it on a person’s back,” the captain said, adding that the out-of-context jump felt like a dip in the sea, which has a bad connotation in the local cultural and linguistic context.
Artnet News has contacted Harbor City for comment, but had no response at the time of publication.
KAWS Fellow in Victoria Harbour, Hong Kong. Photo: Isaac Lawrence//AFP/Getty Images.
Lee, the feng shui practitioner, also compared the bad omen projected by JR’s new work with that of American artist Kaws. Kaws Vacation public installation in Hong Kong which was shown in March 2019. The installation saw the gigantic cross-eyed inflatable sculpture of Fellow lying flat on his back floating on Victoria Harbour, which Lee interpreted as Hong Kong’s “basin of fortune”.
“Call me superstitious, but placing a ‘floating corpse’ in the middle of Victoria Harbor the sight is unbearable,” Lee wrote in a March 2019 post. Lee then followed up with another post in October 2019, when the city was rocked by pro-democracy protests that erupted in June, sparked by the anti-extradition movement. “The ‘Corpse in Victoria Harbour’ artwork was just a prophecy,” he wrote, predicting that the city will continue to suffer in the years to come, affecting all local citizens, regardless of their age and political orientation.
Whether or not Kaws’ installation can be read as an omen, in reality the town was almost cut off from the rest of the world for almost three years under strict Covid restrictions. Authorities continue to suppress political dissent since the implementation of the National Security Law in 2020 and the resumption of the use of colonial era sedition law, which saw hundreds of activists, pro-democracy politicians and journalists arrested. The city’s stock index, Hang Seng Index, plunged from its highest mark at over 30,000 in May 2019 to 14,863 in October 2022, its lowest since 2009.
Is JR’s new artwork really a bad omen? Benson Wong, a former Hong Kong Baptist University political science professor turned astrologer and psychic, noted that in this case, the meaning of the work is defined by the viewers. If the artwork is associated with negative meanings, the artwork is considered “a projection or manifestation of such negativity and unlucky energies,” Wong told Artnet News. “It’s a reflection of the collective consciousness.”
Follow Artnet News on Facebook:
Want to stay one step ahead of the art world? Subscribe to our newsletter to receive breaking news, revealing interviews and incisive reviews that move the conversation forward.
