Blue Throat: Start the Churning｜青喉：開始攪動
Art Central 2023 Special Exhibition
Curated by Chris Wan and Jeremy Ip
Curatorial statement:
In the legend of the Samudra Manthana, or “churning of the ocean of milk”, the devas (gods) and their archnemeses, the asuras (demigods), stir the ocean, attempting to produce amrita, the elixir of immortality. This gift of the sea is eventually revealed, but not before the halahala – a poison so toxic that it threatens to destroy all living beings. Coming to the rescue, the great god Shiva takes the poison in his throat, turning it blue forever.
This ancient story metaphorically echoes the present day, a time in which modernity and globalisation intertwine with constantly accelerating development.
Societies engaged in these extraordinary transformations perpetually face tests of their beliefs, desires and bodies – absorbing the tensions churned up in the process.
Blue Throat: Start the Churning brings together sixteen artists from Hong Kong to examine and reinterpret the relationship between the individual and the collective, self and the contemporary world through the lens of art – here in the modern metropolis of Hong Kong.
Let’s start the churning, let the unseen be revealed. May the voiceless blue throat lead the song once more.
