ARTS & CULTURE Only romance

Artist Kongkee uses the past as a metaphor to discuss the present.

By NICKY NI

If there’s one thing we know about Afrofuturism, it’s that it uses speculative genres as a future-imagining device to share criticism and discontent about the present. Asian Futurism, as discussed by scholars such as Dawn Chan and Xin Wang, is a loose discourse that struggles to find footholds in the west outside of techno-Orientalism. There exists a glaring unease of pitching a show on futurism that is universal but also happens to be Asian.

Curated by Abby Chen, senior associate curator of contemporary art at the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco, “Kongkee: Warring States Cyberpunk,” the solo exhibition by Malaysia-born, Hong Kong-raised, and London-based artist Kong Khong-chang, aka Kongkee, glows from San Francisco all the way to Wrightwood 659 in striking colors and provocative imagery that are themselves a publicity stunt. Promoted as “a luminous electronic art installation combining ancient poetry and modern anime . . . presented as a futurist fantasy,” Chen hopes the show helps us imagine what “a vibrant strain of ‘Asian Futurism’ can look and feel like: one full of energy, music, and color that creatively entwines the enigma of the past with caution toward cutting-edge technologies yet to be discovered.” The cyberpunk aesthetic is luring and ironic when it embraces one of the places it draws inspiration from: Hong Kong.

Occupying the third and fourth floors and the rooftop corridors of Wrightwood’s Tadao Ando-designed interior, the show materializes facets of Kongkee’s sprawling universe— largely based on the artist’s comic series Mi Leo Virtual —that reincarnate popular iconographies from ancient Chinese history and mythology into characters of a Hong Kong-inspired cyberpunk dystopia. The exhibition incorporates historical objects to better contextualize the rich Chinese history that Kongkee references: bronze cooking vessels and figurines dating back to the third century BCE are sitting on top of backlit tiles that breathe in neon lights. In the same gallery, two large vertical LED panels shu e illustrations of robots and retro-futuristic cityscapes, setting a moody and nostalgic atmosphere.

It’s hard not to associate this exhibition with the pro-democracy protests that have occurred in Hong Kong since the Umbrella Revolution in 2014, even though they aren’t mentioned. Coinciding with the preparation of this show, between 2019 and 2020, Hong Kong experienced waves of protests against the government’s introduction of a bill to amend the Fugitive Offenders Ordinance regarding extradition. Under this light, Kongkee’s art can be read as a political allegory that masks a collective anxiety and pessimism.

Using the past as a metaphor to examine the present is a crucial tactic that encompasses Chinese art and literature. History is rarely discussed without some kind of insinuation of its parallel to the present. When criticizing the entities in power in a straightforward manner is not attainable, historical anecdotes become vessels through which to express such dissonance. Besides its functionality of bypassing censorship, it also implies the cyclical nature of history, well accepted by Chinese culture. Mythology becomes prophecy; the present is a memory relived, a history activated.

So is the setup of the Kongkee universe. Joe the Robot is an intelligent android implanted with the memory of Qu Yuan (c. 339-278 BCE), a Chinese poet and politician in the state of Chu during the Warring States period (c. 471-221 BCE) who was later appropriated as a nationalist and patriotic icon—“The People’s Poet”—after the founding of Communist China. Qu Yuan is reimagined as eye candy, a rock musician with a man bun. His counterpart, King Huai of Chu, who in real life was the ruler that Qu Yuan served before the latter was banished, is transformed into an androgynous man who is also Qu Yuan’s love interest and companion. (According to scholarly research, homosexuality in ancient China among the elite was common, and Qu Yuan is believed to have expressed his love toward King Huai in

R“KONGKEE: WARRING STATES CYBERPUNK”

Through 7/ 15 : Thu 1-8 PM, Fri noon-7 PM, Sat 10 AM- 5 PM, Wrightwood 659, 659 W. Wrightwood, wrightwood 659.org, general admission $15, advance tickets required the former’s well-known epic poem “Li Sao,” or “The Lament”.) The state of Chu was eventually destroyed by the Qin Dynasty, in which the emperor Qin Shi Huang ruled a unified China for merely 14 years.

The climax of the exhibition, the three animated shorts of the series “Dragon’s Disillusion” proposes a speculated bifurcation of history, one that supposes that Qin Shi Huang, who is historically portrayed as a tyrant, successfully procures a formula for immortality and should thus reign for eternity. If a tyranny that doesn’t end doesn’t already sound familiar, Joe wakes up in a peaceful dystopia where an immortal and cyborg population is cybernetically governed by regular system upgrades. Robotic soldiers of Qin’s army are each equipped with a smiling mask (nodding to cynical realism). Certain activities are banned, like video games, that are thought to pollute the spirit and the soul.

“Give up your soul. Without your soul, you won’t feel pain anymore.” This quote recurs in dialogue and intertitles throughout the animation, as Joe, recalling his past life, sets out to discover what it means to be human. The present, flashbacks, speculations—and hallucinations—swirl together with trippy motifs. Narration is destabilized by quick jump-cuts and symbolic close-ups, swashed by a melancholic sentimentality that imbues Hong Kong cinema. Think In the Mood for Love by Wong Kar-wai combined with Paprika by Satoshi Kon (not to mention that Katherine, Kongkee’s red-headed femme fatale, seems a doppelgänger of the dream-world agent Paprika). This lament of bygone days only hints at the question of what it means to be human without freedom. “Qu Yuan,” King Huai asks, “tell me, why do humans create robots?” “I don’t know . . . ” Qu Yuan replies, “to complete the task that human cannot?” If it’s impossible for a human to free their mind when their body is under surveillance, can a robot attempt otherwise?

The exhibition ends with a monumental three-channel projection, River , an animated video that evokes the cityscape of Hong Kong—street signs, colonial architecture, trains, and ferries—floating on a river like garbage. Once you step outside to the corridors, floor-to-ceiling windows are stenciled with a gigantic pair of wings, framing translated excerpts—quoted from “Xiao Yao You (Free and Easy Wandering),” work by Chinese Daoist philosopher Zhuangzi—which fantasize the unimaginable freedom that Peng, the mythological bird of immeasurable size, enjoys. As you turn, you see a stenciled bird sitting in an open human hand. What to make of all this? Perhaps it’s best to resort to a quote from the exhibition catalog, a preface written by Kongkee’s peer Nico Tang: “Let’s not talk about politics, only romance that concerns the wind and the moon.” v

This review has been edited for space; a full version is readable at chicagoreader.com

@mllecolettex

R“ STANLEY BROUWN”

Through 7/31: Mon 11 AM- 5 PM, Thu 11 AM- 8 PM, Fri-Sun 11 AM- 5 PM, Art Institute of Chicago, 111 S. Michigan, artic.edu/exhibitions, adults $ 32 ($ 40 Fast Pass, $27 Illinois residents, $20 Chicago residents), seniors 65 +, students, and teens 14 -17 $26 ($ 34 Fast Pass, $21 Illinois residents, $14 Chicago residents), children under 14 free