HONG KONG — Among the many attractions Hong Kong has to offer, poetry is not really top of mind.
Yet a visit to Hong Kong’s museum of contemporary visual culture M+ will very quickly make you think, “Why not?”
The “Dial-A-Poem Hong Kong” installation at the museum allows you to press any button on a telephone sculpture to listen to randomly selected recordings of 30 local poets reading out their own poetry.
Even if you do not understand the poem (which could either be in Cantonese, English or Mandarin), just enjoy the sounds and rhythms, or hang up and dial again to hear another poem.
Another highlight at M+ now is the “Lee Bul: From 1998 to Now” exhibition, which is displaying over 200 works by prominent South Korean artist Lee Bul until August 9.
In a guided tour by M+’s Curator of Design and Architecture Sunny Cheung, he spoke about the themes in her art, including: utopia, dystopia, the cycle of success and failure as humans seek to progress, trauma and healing.
One of Lee Bul’s installations is “Via Negativa”, a maze of mirrors that you can walk through, with the seemingly infinite reflections intended to reveal fragments of your self-consciousness.
Cheung pointed out that Lee Bul’s “Scale of Tongue” is a powerful work referencing South Korea’s 2014 Sewol ferry disaster where hundreds of school children died, adding that it evokes the continued trauma of divers who had to recover the bodies and that it also comments on news suppression on the tragedy.
After your visit to M+, you can take a short stroll to the nearby Hong Kong Palace Museum (HKPM), which has multiple dining options including dim sum restaurant King Lung Heen.
It’s best to buy your HKPM ticket online in advance, and remember to follow the reserved time slot (e.g. you can only enter its exhibitions from 2pm if you bought an afternoon session ticket.
Don’t miss the “Ancient Egypt Unveiled: Treasures from Egyptian Museums” exhibition at the Hong Kong Palace Museum (HKPM), which runs until August 31.
This exhibition shows 250 ancient Egyptian treasures — spanning nearly 4,000 years and with many of them exhibited outside Egypt for the first time — on loan from Egypt’s Supreme Council of Antiquities (SCA).
These loaned historical objects are from seven of Egypt’s museums and also includes the latest archaeological finds from Saqqara.
Saqqara, the main burial ground of ancient Egypt’s earliest capital Memphis and near the country’s current capital Cairo, is where more than 20 pyramids and millions of animal mummies have been found.
Saqqara is touted by HKPM to be the site of one of the world’s top 10 archaeological finds in 2019 and 2020, and the exhibition includes seven cat mummies found there.
