The Art of Collecting: Daphne King-Yao on carving space for contemporary Chinese art in Hong Kong

Despite growing up in a family with a keen interest in art from the region—as well as her gallerist mother, her shipping magnate grandfather CY Tung was known for supporting Chinese diaspora artists in the US—King-Yao didn’t spend much time appreciating Chinese art when she was studying art history at the University of Pennsylvania in the US. She says that in her early days of collecting, she was more inclined to source western artists like Picasso due to the western art-focused syllabus and time spent at the nearby Philadelphia Museum of Art, which mainly showed American modern and European art.

“That’s what my eye became used to. I wasn’t taught about Chinese art and what it was about,” she says. But when she came back to Hong Kong in 1994 and started running the gallery alongside her mother in 1997, she felt a change. “I started working with Chinese artists. Being in this environment, I became more appreciative of contemporary Chinese art,” she says.

Read more: New York-based Chinese ‘curves’ artist Yuan Fang has her eyes set on Hong Kong this month

She became particularly intrigued by the inventiveness of contemporary Chinese artists who make the genre fun and relevant. For instance, instead of using the usual ink and brush, ink artist Wang Tiande uses lit incense sticks to create intricate landscapes. In recent works, he has been adding a sense of antiquity by incorporating rubbings of stones from ancient times or drawings and paintings by ancient masters, creating a dialogue between past and present. Another example is Zhang Xiaoli, who creates Chinese landscape paintings in which the mountains and cities are made with Lego bricks—a practice that encapsulates both the artist’s childhood memories of playing with the toy and the idea of “constructing” new Chinese art.

King-Yao has continued the relationships her mother built with Chinese diaspora artists and older generations of artists in Asia, and added her own; today, Alisan Fine Arts represents more than 100 artists and remains one of the few galleries in Hong Kong that promotes Chinese contemporary artists.

Soon after King-Yao took up the baton of gallery director, she started making an effort to spotlight female Chinese art artists. In 2014, her third year in the role, she curated an exhibition of four artists’ work called Beyond the Jade Terraces. Her co-curator was showing her a list on her iPad of about 20 artists to choose from. “I started picking the ones I liked, and she went, ‘Oh, all the artists you chose are female.’ So maybe it was just my eye,” says King-Yao. “That was what I appreciated: the works were a little bit softer and more feminine.”

The show took place right on the cusp of a global conversation about recognising female artists, who have long been overshadowed and overlooked by an art market dominated by men. “So we were a little bit ahead of the game,” she says, adding that the movement encouraged her to consciously “start promoting more and more female artists” by showcasing a good mix of male and female artists to her clients. At the latest exhibition at the Lyndhurst Terrace gallery space in late June, more than half of the presenting artists were women. “The gender balance is [now skewed] the other way around,” she says.

Last year, she opened Alisan Atelier in Aberdeen. It has a homier vibe than the Central space, which is a more typical gallery setting: there’s a reading room with shelves filled with art books and catalogues, a studio with a piano, a display hall connecting to a balcony and a dining area—all featuring paintings and sculptures that speak to the different spaces. “The atelier is a reflection of how I collect art and display it in my home,” she says. And while it is a place to show her clients works by the artists of her latest acquisitions, she also wants to inspire people to have fun with their collections at home.

“Art isn’t just an investment. Some buyers put their pieces into storage and never see them again. I want to change that perception and educate the younger generation to think that [sometimes art] isn’t like a blue chip or a stock, and that they can actually put it on a wall and appreciate it.

“For me, I would never think of my art as an investment. It’s something to be seen, appreciated and lived with.”

NOW READ

From the sky to the screen: Cai Guo Qiang renegotiates human artists’ relationship with AI

Canto-pop star Louis Cheung takes on famous Hong Kong musical ‘The Impossible Trial’

Twice debuts in Hong Kong in December: everything you need to know