Custodians of art's stories

Layers of lived experience

AAA's newest exhibition, "Portals, Stories and Other Journeys" at Tai Kwun Contemporary, complements the "Learning…" show by turning the spotlight on the solitary figure of the archivist — quietly beavering away in the background, often for years together, creating resources for the use of the intellectually curious.

In "Portals…" works by a group of artists — Banu Cennetolu (Istanbul), Raqs Media Collective (Delhi), Walid Raad (Beirut/New York) and Kwan Sheung-chi and Lam Wing-sze from Hong Kong — are presented as a homage to the personal archive of the sculptor, printmaker and photographer Ha Bik-chuen (1925-2009). Ha took photos of over 2,500 art exhibitions in Hong Kong, covering roughly 50 years since the 1960s. It took the archivists of AAA nearly seven years to sift through the cornucopia of photographs, press clippings and scrapbooks overflowing Ha's studio, in order to catalogue and digitize much of the material collected in more than 600 cardboard boxes.