Artists and art educators Kurt Chan Yuk Keung, Linda Lai Chiu-han, Leung Mee Ping, and Siu King Chung reflect on their extensive teaching careers and offer alternative perspectives on the development of art history in Hong Kong.
For Asia Art Archive’s twenty-fifth anniversary, this year’s Teaching Labs features four artists and art workers whose pivotal roles in Hong Kong’s art institutions over the past two decades have influenced a new generation of artists. In this series of conversations, AAA invites Kurt Chan Yuk Keung, Linda Lai Chiu-han, Leung Mee Ping, and Siu King Chung to discuss their long-standing teaching careers, and explore their innovative ideas, teaching methods, and how they balanced teaching and their own creative careers. Conversations with these four seasoned educators will trace the development of art history in Hong Kong through the lens of art education, hoping to inspire the next generation of art educators.
Additionally, Siu King Chung leads a workshop for teachers on education design. He works with participants to tackle current challenges in their teaching with existing resources, and to develop a feasible pedagogical approach using creative ideas.
A certificate will be given to teachers as proof of Continuing Professional Development of Teachers (CPD).
Talk｜Kurt Chan and Linda Lai
Sat, 5 Apr 2025, 10:30am–1pm
Is the core aim of art education to nurture artists? How can art courses be designed to provide a comprehensive learning experience for students? Should artists assume a different role when they are teaching—one that is separate from how they create art?
AAA invites Kurt Chan and Linda Lai to explore the relationship between art education and creative practice. Chan has taught media art courses for many years, integrating processes of contemporary art creation into his theoretical frameworks, while Lai has established a number of cross-disciplinary courses with a focus on the dialogue and interaction between new media art and other fields. The pair draws on their extensive teaching experience to explore how teaching art impacts the way they approach their creative practice, and how they balance theory and praxis. They also discuss the importance of inspiring creative ideas and perspectives through art education.
Respondents
Hung Keung, artist and educator
Moderator
Susanna Chung, AAA
Open to the public with registration.
Talk｜Leung Mee Ping and Siu King Chung
Sat, 10 May 2025, 10:30am–1pm
How do we measure, understand, and close the distance between art and reality? How can art education venture outside the bounds of the classroom and truly be in dialogue with its society and community?
In this conversation, Leung Mee Ping and Siu King Chung discuss their teaching practices, and how “visual art” education can be extended to include “visual culture,” which is more commonly used in the context of Hong Kong. Students learn how art education isn’t merely about developing technical skills, but also about honing their senses in relation to observing and thinking more broadly about culture and society.
Respondents
Pat Wong Wing Shan (Flyingpig), artist and educator
Moderator
Susanna Chung, AAA
Open to the public with registration.
Educator Workshops
Sat, 10 May 2025, 2:30–4:30pm
Sat, 24 May 2025, 2:30–4:30pm
Siu King Chung, along with participating teachers, design experimental visual art syllabi within the confines of existing frameworks, and devise suitable lesson themes and learning activities to explore students’ interests. Over two weeks, teachers implement these experiments in classrooms and observe students’ responses and progress, while taking note of the obstacles they may encounter.
In the second workshop, participants share their experiences implementing these experiments, discussing learning outcomes and the challenges they faced, as well as the ideas they used to overcome the difficulties. The conversations generated from this workshop serve as new models for visual art education in the future.
The workshop is offered to twenty-five participants on a first-come, first-served basis.
The workshops are offered exclusively to educators. Participants are required to attend the corresponding morning talks.
Linda Lai is a transdisciplinary artist, academic, and contemporary media arts curator. Her experimental video works explore Hong Kong urban life and historical methods via a feminist sensibility that integrates critical theory, film studies, and visual and audio ethnography. She has taught and researched at the School of Creative Media at City University of Hong Kong for twenty-five years, during which she established multiple transdisciplinary new media art courses.
Kurt Chan Yuk Keung has taught media art at the Chinese University of Hong Kong’s Department of Fine Arts for twenty-seven years, and was Programme Director for its MFA programme. He has participated in over 100 exhibitions, including the 51st Venice Biennale and the 2nd Asia Pacific Triennial. He served as Chief Editor for Hong Kong Visual Arts Yearbook for several years and was Art Director for City Art Square. He is currently a consultant for Tai Kwun, the Hong Kong Museum of Art, and Asia Art Archive. His research interests include Hong Kong art, mixed media art, and public art.
Leung Mee Ping is Emeritus Professor at Hong Kong Baptist University and has taught in Hong Kong for over twenty years. She is a freelance creative and continues to participate in various artistic experiments. Her artistic practice involves observing visual culture through the humble and mundane. Most recently, she took part in the Akiyoshidai International Art Village and Nakanojo Biennale in Japan, and the Artists-in-Residence programme at Soulangh Cultural Park in Tainan.
Siu King Chung is an artist, curator, and commentator. He taught at Hong Kong Polytechnic University for nearly thirty years, serving as Associate Professor, Associate Dean, and programme leader of art and design programmes. He has played an active role in the development of Hong Kong art policy and design curriculum, and was the former president of the Hong Kong Society for Education in Art. As a founding member of the installation group NUX, the Community Museum Project, and various other art initiatives, Siu explores the possibilities of installation art and facilitates collaborative exhibition projects and publications between students, teachers, and designers.
Hung Keung is Professor at Education University of Hong Kong of Cultural and Creative Arts. He established imhk lab in 2005, focusing on new media art research and the development and application of interactive art software. In recent years, his work aims to convey the possibilities in contemporary video and interactive art, centring on discussions of religion, the experience of nature and one’s state of mind, and ideas relating to philosophy, landscape, ink, and time and space. Hung graduated from Hong Kong Polytechnic University’s School of Design and Chinese University of Hong Kong’s Department of Fine Arts. He holds an MA in Film and Video from Central Saint Martins and a PhD from Zurich University of the Arts.
Pat Wing Shan Wong (aka Flyingpig) is Assistant Professor at Hong Kong Baptist University’s Academy of Visual Arts. Her work centres on urban development, examining its personal and public impact between architecture, technology, identity, and memory. She has collaborated with the Hong Kong Museum of Art, Tai Kwun Centre for Heritage and Art, Kingston School of Art, the Museum of London, and the Royal College of Art.
Susanna Chung is Head of Learning & Participation and Head of Special Initiatives at Asia Art Archive.
The programme is developed by Carol Choi, Susanna Chung, and Hazel Kwok, with support from Jocelin Kee.
The AAA Learning & Participation Programme is generously supported by the S. H. Ho Foundation Limited.
The two public talks and workshops are part of the project Recalling Disappearance: Hong Kong Contemporary Art which is financially supported by the Arts Capacity Development Funding Scheme of the Government of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region. The content of this programme does not reflect the views of the Government of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region.
