M+ and Art Basel co-commission The Shape of Light, a brand new work for M+ Facade by moving image pioneer Ellen Pau

M+, Asia’s first global museum of contemporary visual culture in the West Kowloon Cultural District in Hong Kong, is delighted to announce a brand-new moving image work by pioneering Hong Kong artist Ellen Pau, co-commissioned with Art Basel. The work, titled The Shape of Light, will be shown on the M+ Facade from Friday, 20 May 2022 until Sunday, 19 June 2022 at 7 to 9pm daily. The project marks the first major collaborative commission for the M+ Facade since M+’s opening in November 2021.

Supported by UBS, Lead Partner of Art Basel, The Shape of Light is a site-specific moving image work made specially for the M+ Facade. Using digitally animated special effects, the video explores the possibilities of the immaterial and the material, transforming light into digital objects. Featuring a popular sutra in Mahayana Buddhism, The Heart Sutra, here expressed through sign language, the ritualistic video meditates on the concept ‘form is emptiness, emptiness is form’. Natural phenomena like fire, water, and light are all rendered in awe-inspiring computer-generated animation.

Pau’s moving image work intertwines live-action performance and spectacular sci-fi sequences, delivering a one-of-a-kind experience for the Hong Kong audiences on the M+ Facade. In Pau’s words, the M+ Facade is a futuristic lighthouse ‘standing on the shores of West Kowloon like a guardian that shines a light to all travellers and homecomers’. The site-specific video is offered as a gesture of guidance and hope for audiences in Hong Kong, where ‘illumination from the M+ offices interlaces with an electronic glow from the video wall. Clusters of cells and pixels merge with the building’s architecture, forming a new cultural observatory to the place artists call home.’

Born and raised in Hong Kong, Pau is a leading figure in the city’s media art scene whose works have been exhibited locally and internationally since the 1980s. Pau is known for exploring the intersection of visual-art languages with the latest technologies. She takes inspiration from new media to examine ever-evolving notions of self and the changing times in which we live.

Suhanya Raffel, Museum Director, M+, emphasises the significance of M+’s collaboration with Art Basel on contributing to the thriving Hong Kong art landscape, ‘The co-commission deepens our partnership with Art Basel and underpins M+’s mission to amplify the international resonance of Hong Kong artists and their works. I am truly excited to see this video work by Ellen Pau presented on the M+ Facade, an extended exhibition space that connects us with the wider public in Hong Kong.’

Adeline Ooi, Director Asia, Art Basel, says, ‘It has been an incredible time for Art Basel in Hong Kong, as we work with our local communities and partners to develop meaningful projects to share with the city. We are truly honoured to work with M+ to present Ellen Pau’s The Shape of Light, the first major co-commission project since the museum’s celebrated opening. Inspired by the Heart Sutra and expressed through sign language and dance, we hope that Ellen’s meditative, yet stunning work will inspire audiences in Hong Kong and beyond.’

Doryun Chong, Deputy Director, Curatorial and Chief Curator, M+, highlights Pau’s prominence in Hong Kong’s new media art scene. ‘Ellen Pau is one of the earliest artists in the field of media art who started in the 1980s. Pau’s work and her tireless contribution to the local media art landscape has earned her wide recognition in the region. Her brand-new work, The Shape of Light brilliantly utilises the architectural shape and technological infrastructure of the M+ building, turning this artistic interpretation into an offer of reflection and respite for her beloved home city, which has just undergone a challenging time.’

Ulanda Blair, Curator, Moving Image, M+, further elaborates on the uniqueness and power of Pau’s work. ‘The Shape of Light is ceremonial and mystical. It marries the spiritual hand-dance of The Heart Sutra with striking special effects, creatively and sensitively harnessing the idiosyncrasies of the M+ Facade. Pau herself compares the M+ Facade and building to a lighthouse on the shores of West Kowloon. In this way, The Shape of Light echoes her historic work Great Movement (1993–95), which features a lone lighthouse as a stalwart in troubled times.’

Ellen Pau shares her excitement on the co-commission, ‘I am delighted to have created The Shape of Light for M+ and Art Basel to be displayed on the M+ Facade. I cannot think of a better site to show this video work which is created for Hong Kong and its people. I hope The Shape of Light can convey a healing message to the city.’

M+ and Art Basel will present a series of public programmes, including a live durational performance, an artist talk, and an online screening following the debut of The Shape of Light

Complementing the display of The Shape of Light on M+ Facade, M+ and Art Basel will also present a series of free online and offline events, making the artwork more accessible to the public.

The Shape of Light live performance by Ellen Pau, in collaboration with Elysa Wendi (dramaturge), Quinn Wong (producer/live-coder), Shane Aspegren (sound artist), Amy Chan (lighting designer) and Wong Sze Mei (sign language performer), will offer a space of healing, using sound, light, and digital objects. The drop-in performance will run from 5 to 8pm on Friday, 27 May 2022 at The Forum, M+.

Ellen Pau will be in dialogue with Ulanda Blair about her new work, The Shape of Light at a talk and screening. Attendees will here have the rare opportunity to experience some of Pau’s past works made between 1988 and 2015. The talk will take place from 2 to 3:30pm on Saturday, 28 May 2022 at the M+ Grand Stair, M+.

A four-day online screening from Sunday, 29 May to Wednesday, 1 June 2022 will enable local and international audiences to view a collection of Ellen Pau’s pioneering videos and installations made between 1988 and 2015. Each video will include an audio commentary by Pau, describing the ideas and inspiration behind her work.

For the latest information on the programmes, please visit www.mplus.org.hk.

Remarks

Art Basel Hong Kong 2022

Private View (by invitation only)
Wednesday, May 25, 12nn to 8pm
Thursday, May 26, 12nn to 8pm
Friday, May 27, 12nn to 2pm
Saturday, May 28, 12nn to 2pm
Sunday, May 29, 11am to 12nn

Vernissage
Friday, May 27, 2pm to 8pm

Show Hours
Saturday, May 28, 2pm to 8pm
Sunday, May 29, 12nn to 6pm

About Ellen Pau
Born and raised in Hong Kong Ellen Pau (born 1961) is an artist who aims to raise our awareness of our physical presence and inspire contemplation of what it means to be, to exist, here and now, and beyond that, the space each of us occupies.

Pau became one of the earliest pioneering video artists in Hong Kong. For Pau, the inspiration she takes from new media is used to examine the self and the times we are living in, ever-shifting and evolving. Beyond artistic creation, Pau has also been a leader in the promotion, curation and education of art and culture in Hong Kong, through the founding of several important initiatives. This includes Hong Kong’s oldest video artist collective and earliest archive for media art, Videotage, co-founded in 1986. She also founded Microwave International New Media Arts Festival in 1996.

Pau's works have been exhibited locally and worldwide in film festivals and art exhibitions, including Hong Kong International Film Festival (1990, 1993, 1997 & 2000), 8th International Film Festival for Women (Spain, 1992), Copenhagen Cultural Capital Foundation, Container 96 (Denmark, 1996), Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art (Lisbon, 1996), Johannesburg Biennale (1997), Gwangju Biennial (2002), Liverpool Biennial (2003), Sydney International Film Festival (2004), among others. In 2001, Recycling Cinema, one of her most significant video installations, was first presented at the Hong Kong Pavilion in the 49th Venice Biennale; it is now among her works collected by M+ and was part of the inaugural exhibition when it opened in 2021. Pau has had a few solo shows in Hong Kong in recent times, including her first retrospective, Ellen Pau: What about Home Affairs? — A Retrospective, curated by Freya Chou at Para Site in 2018, and The Great Movement at Edouard Malingue Gallery in 2019.

About M+
M+ is a museum dedicated to collecting, exhibiting, and interpreting visual art, design and architecture, moving image, and Hong Kong visual culture of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Located in Hong Kong’s West Kowloon Cultural District, M+ is one of the largest museums of modern and contemporary visual culture in the world, with a bold ambition to establish ourselves as one of the world’s leading cultural institutions. Our aim is to be a new kind of museum that reflects our unique time and place, a museum that builds on Hong Kong’s historic balance of the local and the international to define a distinctive and innovative voice for Asia’s twenty-first century.

About the West Kowloon Cultural District
The West Kowloon Cultural District is one of the largest and most ambitious cultural projects in the world. Its vision is to create a vibrant new cultural quarter for Hong Kong on forty hectares of reclaimed land located alongside Victoria Harbour. With a varied mix of theatres, performance spaces, and museums, the West Kowloon Cultural District will produce and host world-class exhibitions, performances, and cultural events, providing twenty-three hectares of public open space, including a two-kilometre waterfront promenade.