Ora-Ora’s Henrietta Tsui-Leung expounds on her new Korean show and the thrill of the art world’s reinvention.
Are you coming to Paris? Do you see there are bedbugs in Paris? I saw it in the New York Times. I’m very scared. I don’t want to get bitten.” Henrietta Tsui-Leung, founder and CEO of Hong Kong’s Ora-Ora and co-founder of the Hong Kong Art Gallery Association is speaking to us from her gallery in Tai Kwun, the day before she flies to Europe to partake for a second time in October’s Asia NOW art fair in Paris, running alongside the newly introduced Paris+ by Art Basel.
But the French capital has been experiencing a surge in bedbugs, with insects spotted in cinemas, on the city’s Metro and even the airport, and Paris deputy mayor Emmanuel Gregoire tells French television that unseasonal warmer weather means the issue is “widespread”. I assuage Tsui-Leung’s fears by suggesting the bedbugs are boarding Eurostar trains across the Channel, and riding London’s Bakerloo Tube line to Frieze London in Regent’s Park, to mark the occasion of the art fair’s 20th anniversary. Tsui-Leung’s concern is reminder that the original Frieze London in 2003 witnessed parades of insects crawling around the art tent, though today’s iterations bear little resemblance to their flimsy early millennial counterparts.
But then, bugs or no bugs, Tsui-Leung’s also been bitten by the current art buzz surrounding Paris. There’s a strong post-Brexit feeling that London’s art market is beginning to struggle; recent Sotheby’s and Christie’s sales were lacklustre; housing and studio space is more affordable in Paris than London, meaning artists get to collaborate more easily while living in the centre; Paris has benefitted from the launch of last year’s Paris+ by Art Basel, and a spate of leading galleries opening new premises in the City of Light – Gagosian, David Zwirner and White Cube all since Brexit, and Hauser & Wirth’s just debuted four-storey space in the 8e arrondissement.
What does Leung think? “Yes, for sure it’s happening. Unfortunately, the UK isn’t Europe any more, and Europeans don’t want to let the UK be the most interesting place. Friends of mine are bitter about the UK leaving Europe and don’t understand why you can’t say you’re part of Europe. That will make Paris the next centre. People there really want to make it work and are very motivated, and its collectors are very sophisticated.”
As is Tsui-Leung’s prodigious reach and aspiration. She showed William Lim (there’ll be an upcoming show of his new project soon), Sophie Cheng and artificial intelligence (AI) artist Genesis Kai at Asia NOW, one month after showing YiYi Jeong-Eun, Joseph Tong, Finnish artist Juri Markkula and Stephen Thorpe at Kiaf (Korea International Art Fair) Seoul 2023. Most recently, she showed Kai and multi-hyphenate tech-artist and programmer Henry Chu at Hong Kong’s Digital Art Fair.
And all of that the preface to this month’s show at Ora-Ora, Alive, Alive Oh!, by South Korean artist Yi Yi. Seoul-born Yi Yi, a Fine Arts bachelor and master’s graduate from Seoul National University, presents paintings inspired by real time and real places, but that are still somewhat abstract. “Although some of my Korean collectors have followed the evolution of my style through my previous exhibitions, this one allows me to present a comprehensive overview of my works, inspired by nature, including my morning and afternoon series,” the artist says.
Visitors should be struck by the dynamism and energy suffusing Yi Yi’s canvases. “It’s all about the joy of being alive,” Yi Yi enthuses. “I hope people will feel the colourful energy of the scenery around us. Colour is a vital component: one recurrent motif is the rainbow, which can’t be owned or created by human hands; their vitality is not to be questioned or analysed but simply embraced.” Tsui-Leung calls the work “very dreamy” and says she fell in love with Yi Yi’s work on the spot.
Leung had first seen Y Yi’s work at Kiaf in 2022, and made contact, much to the artist’s delight, through a mutual friend. “I was thrilled when she did because Ora-Ora was already on my radar,” says the artist, who’d been following the gallery’s social-media footprint for some time. “I’d been looking for a gallery to represent me from Hong Kong, the US or the UK and Ora-Ora had caught my eye because of their ability to discover and develop artists on the international stage. It seems like destiny when I think back on it,” she says.
This pre-emptive and intuitive approach to sourcing artists has become a hallmark
of Tsui-Leung’s Ora-Oraism. She’s discovered and promoted the likes of Zhang Yanzi, who she’s taken to New York and museum shows in Europe, as well as Art Basel Hong Kong. She also represents Hangzhou-based Peng Jian and Chongqing’s Xiao Xu, whom she considers “excitingly contemporary artists with a real link to classical traditions”. She brought Finnish artist Juri Markkula to Hong Kong – and his ascent has been rapid since. “Seeing how sought-after his works have become has been tremendously rewarding,” she says.
As recently as 2021, Ora-Ora became something of a pioneer in becoming the first gallery to show NFTs at an Art Basel fair during its Hong Kong iteration, through the Macanese artist Cindy Ng. “It’s an exciting technology and, and part of the joy of my role is to take the gallery in new directions,’’ says Tsui-Leung. But given the recent stalling of the NFT market, when I ask how she reflects on such innovation, unsurprisingly she has reservations. “However, we’re also glad we didn’t participate in some of the frenzy and excesses of the PFP market that followed. Blockchain has an important role to play in protecting the integrity of an artist’s work and proving provenance,” she says, “but we didn’t want to add to a wave of speculative price movements.”
Meanwhile, she’s already fast-tracking art’s next future, having signed up Ora-Ora’s first AI artist, Genesis Kai, conceptualised by Korean-Hong Kong artist Ming Shiu, who bills her creation, or avatar, as “the first Nova Sapien artist of the phygital world”.
“Genesis is text-based, she cannot draw,” explains Tsui-Leung. “So Ming, a photographer artist from NYU, instructs Genesis what to draw after lots of research.” Like many Koreans, Ming is obsessed by the Moon and all matters selenic, and has presented a gorgeous work on traditional hanji paper, The Red Prayer of Park Young Sook’s Moon Jar. Moon jars revolve around ideas of self-reflection, purity and prayer in Korean culture. The jar was appropriated from the Korean female octogenarian artist Park Young Sook, who, intrigued by Ming’s approach, allowed her to scan and combine it with her AI art.
Kai’s ground-breaking approach raises interesting questions: what will the process of making art look like in the future; how much – or little – “human intervention” will exist in a work before we stop classifying something as art. And, the 64-million-dollar paradox: how will we assess the notion of good versus bad art, given that mediums for its production are now so rapidly evolving and changing.
Swiss architect Jacques Herzog remarked to this writer on the eve of Herzog & deMeuron’s M+ museum opening that he was struck by the number of high-ranking female professionals in Hong Kong’s art world, and specifically, at M+. So too, the number of female gallery owners and artists. While late to the cultural party, it seems Hong Kong is way ahead in the “story of art without men” stakes. How does Tsui-Leung assess this progressive evolution?
“It’s a topical question,” she says. “As a female entrepreneur, this is a subject close to my heart. We held an exhibition earlier this year, Semper Femina, solely for female artists, where we showed work by Peng Wei, Huang Dan, Zhang Yanzi and Nina Pryde. I do believe that women have a unique voice, and are able to touch on issues of great significance. Since then, we presented a solo show by an exciting young Hong Kong artist called Sophie Cheung, whom we’re also showing at Asia NOW in Paris.”
Tsui-Leung is part of a pioneering female gallery owner tribe, including Angela Li and Queen Rosita Law. To those considering launching their own gallery space, what would her advice be? “I hope we’ve been good examples,” she says modestly. “It’s a good time to be in Hong Kong, or to come here, and I hope the next generation of gallery owners are inspired by what they see around them. The new museums, the art fairs, the auctions, and the sheer interest in art among the public and collectors means that the landscape here is rich and varied. The principles are eternal, however: be generous with your time, know your subject and your artists, and share with others. The Hong Kong Gallery Association is a good place to start, and the meetings we hold are designed to be welcoming and supportive.”
Artistically, who does Tsui-Leung have an eye on? “Henry Chu is an exciting talent. He wears many hats – designer, programmer, and digital artist – and his work is always topical. He works with music and body movements, and the data he uses, whether on crypto prices, Covid infections or the weather, is often in real time. Secondly, Sophie Cheung. Again, an artist of many interests: she’s a writer, poet and human-rights activist. She delves into her personal history and that of Hong Kong to create innovative, beautiful works from erasers and newsprint.”
And how much has Hong Kong’s burgeoning art scene percolated into the city’s culture? “Everyone is on a learning curve, children and adults included. There are so many great artists, and we’re always looking at new discoveries. The art world is always fresh, always re-inventing itself. And it’s fun to learn more.
There are so many resources available now. The Hong Kong Museum of Art is free and easy to reach. M+ and the Palace Museum are phenomenal additions, which cover between them thousands of years of art history. We have children and art students coming to our gallery and they ask great questions about the artists we show them. It’s always my hope that children will be interested in art. I hope the range of art and media in the market these days will cater to every taste.”
As does Tsui-Leung. Go get thee to Ora-Ora, and get bitten by the power and exhilaration of the art bug.
(Header image: AI artist Genesis Kai at Asia NOW in Paris)
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