9 Hong Kong art events in January 2025: Exhibitions featuring Cézanne, Renoir and more

When: January 2-25, 2025
Where: Fringe Club, 2 Lower Albert Road, Central
What: Hong Kong Fringe Festival, the city’s contemporary and avant-garde performing arts festival hosted by Fringe Club, returns this month after a 13-year hiatus. It will bring more than 100 acts from Hong Kong, mainland China and overseas, including classical music, jazz, contemporary pop, traditional Chinese music, drama, dance, physical theatre, film screenings with discussions, performance skill workshops, art therapy concerts and experimental art tech. Among the well-known names such as jazz maestro Ted Lo and Eugene Pao, the festival also features innovative productions and artists, such as She Plays Jazz, the city’s first all-female jazz orchestra, and Ritz Collective, which is putting on Finding Miss Bai Lan, a stage production set in 1940s Hong Kong that blends live jazz performances and theatrical storytelling.

When: January 17 to May 7
Where: The Special Gallery, 2/F, Hong Kong Museum of Art, 10 Salisbury Road, Tsim Sha Tsui
What: The city’s first major exhibition dedicated to Paul Cézanne (1839-1906) and Pierre-Auguste Renoir (1841-1919), two French Impressionist giants, will be held at the Hong Kong Museum of Art starting from this month. Cézanne’s work is known for its rigour and geometry, which laid the foundation for Cubism in the 20th century. Renoir focused on harmony and delicacy, and was a key figure in Impressionism. The Hong Kong show, highlighting the intersections of their careers, will feature 52 paintings from Musée de l’Orangerie and Musée d’Orsay; 51 are debuting in Hong Kong.

When: Until May 4
Where: Hong Kong Palace Museum, West Kowloon, 18 Museum Drive, Kowloon
What: Another French-themed exhibition is The Forbidden City and the Palace of Versailles: China-France Cultural Encounters in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries, a collaboration between the Hong Kong Palace Museum, the Palace Museum and the Palace of Versailles. The show features nearly 150 relics from both the Palace Museum and the Palace of Versailles. These include handcrafted porcelain, glass and enamel pieces, textiles, books and scientific instruments owned by Qianlong Emperor, Louis XIV and other historical figures in the 17th and 18th centuries.

After visiting the museum, why not go for an extra experience of celebrating the Chinese and French cultural exchange in a culinary way? Dalloyau, Épure and the Hong Kong Palace Museum are jointly organising the “A China-France Cultural Soirée” afternoon tea set at the two restaurants. On the menu are pastries with a Chinese twist—think scones with hawthorn jam and goji osmanthus teacup jelly. Here’s a fun fact: Dalloyau was the only French culinary brand that served the Palace of Versailles when Charles Dalloyau was appointed royal chef by Louis XIV in 1862.

Read more: The best afternoon tea spots in Hong Kong, according to Tatler Hong Kong’s editors

When: January 8 to 22
Where: Various locations
What: The Beare’s Premiere Music Festival, founded in 2009, brings international classical musicians to Hong Kong every January for classical chamber music concerts. This year’s highlights include the Verona Quartet; Avi Avital, the first mandolin soloist nominated for a classical Grammy award; and Il Pomo d’Oro, an orchestra which specialises in historically informed performance of Baroque and Classical music.

When: January 2 to 13
Where: Hong Kong Cultural Centre
What: The Hong Kong Dance Company is organising three companion activities ahead of the February re-run of its award-winning 2014 martial arts-cross-dance production Storm Clouds, inspired by local comic artist Ma Wing-shing’s The Storm Riders (1989). The first event, running from January 11 to 12 at the Cultural Centre Piazza, is an outdoor dance performance against the Victoria Habour skyline, paired with 3D light projection and live electronic music by Hong Kong musician Choi Sai-ho.

The performances come with an art tech exhibition called Storm Clouds: An Interactive Time Travel Experience, which takes place from January 10 to 12. For this, Ma created a new hand-drawn work titled Raging Sea, which is then transformed into animated images by the art team Don’t Believe in Style and projected on to a 270-degree arc-shaped structure.

From January 2 to 13, there will also be an exhibition on the above projects at the foyer of the Cultural Centre.

When: Until February 1
Where: Podium Gallery, Unit 9D, E Tat Factory Building, 4 Heung Yip Road, Wong Chuk Hang
What: The curation of Podium’s winter group exhibition History Will Say We Were Best Friends is inspired by philosopher and historian Michel Foucault’s interview for the French magazine Le Gai Pied in April 1981, where he spoke about queer intimacies and called for novel forms of friendships that upend the “readymade” intimacies of the couple, family, corporation and army. Today, the artists featured in this exhibition—Srijon Chowdhury, Weera-it Ittiteerarak, Dae Uk Kim, Young-jun Tak and Luis Xertu—use their art as a means of gender expression and identity exploration.

Read more: These two Hong Kong-based gallerists have created an inclusive space for underrepresented, emerging and mid-career artists

When: Until March 7
Where: Visionairs, West Kowloon, 18 Museum Drive, Kowloon
What: West Kowloon’s new exhibition space Visionairs opened last month with Notre-Dame de Paris, the Augmented Exhibition. The creative team recreated the sights of Paris’s landmark in its 860-year history with augmented reality (AR) technology, from its conception and construction to its destruction and renovation, which are shown on a tablet that visitors carry inside the space for an interactive experience.

When: January 11
Where: Hong Kong Cultural Centre, Tsim Sha Tsui
What: Western opera meets Cantonese opera at Sleepless Moon, an experimental opera that celebrates the aesthetics and stories of the two art forms and the creative potentials that musicians across genres can bring to Hong Kong’s art landscape. Produced by Cantonese opera performer Eddie Tam and with music written by composer and soprano Lora Chow, the production’s music and story take inspiration from Puccini’s Turandot and Tong Dik-sang’s The Floral Princess. The show will feature both Chinese and western instruments. It tells a poignant tale between a Cantonese opera performer and an investment banker who dreams of becoming an opera singer, whose love is thwarted by societal expectations, cultural gaps and personal ambitions. It’s a story that calls for love and understanding.

Part of Sleepless Moon will be performed at the Hong Kong Philharmonic Orchestra’s Fundraising Concert. The full production’s premiere will be announced soon.

NOW READ

Hong Kong Fringe Festival, hosted by Fringe Club, returns after 13 years, with more emphasis on art from Greater China

How filmmaker Zhang Yimou is revitalising Chinese traditional arts in ‘Macau 2049’

‘Papa’ star Sean Lau and director Philip Yung explore human emotions in a film based on true crime