Monday, November 07 04:30pm
NYU Silver Building (Room 414)
1 Washington Square N, New York, NY 10003
Domestic workers are Hong Kong’s largest minority group and one of the most visible components of the city’s society, and their legal and symbolic status are matters of constant negotiation, reflecting the shifting position of Hong Kong citizenship. The group’s invisibility in the various narratives of what constitutes Hong Kong society is countered by the hyper-visible weekly occupation of Hong Kong’s public spaces for the Sunday picnic gathering of the community. It was the social spaces and cultural structures constituted around this regular gathering that facilitated the beginnings of the project. The stories of migrant domestic workers in Hong Kong are crucial narratives that need to be told alongside the city’s growing affluence in the past decades, together with the stories of the struggles of what is considered the “local” working class, and on the backdrop of the different historical waves of labour migration in Hong Kong and the world. Thus, this event will highlight how several of Hong Kong’s leading contemporary art center, Para/Site exhibitions address various sociopolitical and cultural realities in Hong Kong and beyond in Asia, and how the specific language of exhibition making contributes to this discussion. Cosmin Costinas will focus on the current project, “Afterwork” which is an autonomous proposition, including the often ambivalent and polychromatic aspects of the social and cultural mosaic of Hong Kong, Philippines, Indonesia, as well as of other Asian contexts.
For more information visit: http://eas.as.nyu.edu