Only A Joke Can Save Us
Bo Choy, FAMEME, Hu Rui, Cyrus Hung, Kensuke Koike, Kieran Leach, Mak Ying Tung 2, Pow Martinez, Yan Xinyue
Co-curated by Eunice Tsang and Tiffany Leung
13/5/21
-
3/7/21
Every joke is a tiny revolution.
George Orwell
Embedded in manic laughter is a cry for help, a face perpetually contorted into the laugh-cry emoji. Selected as the Oxford Dictionaries Word of the Year couple of years ago, 😂 was apparently the most used ‘word’ globally. Originally called ‘Face with Tears of Joy’, 😂 has quickly evolved to inhabit deeper complexities, encompassing helplessness, embarrassment, incompetence. Are the tears the result of unhinged laughter; or is laughter a front for bitter tears? HahahAhAHahahahahaHALP!
Humor is specific in its time and space; what makes us laugh reveals a lot about our immediacy, and the world here and now. It also reflects on the evolution of our cultures and endures in its infinite forms: satire, slapstick, irony, parody, memes and so on. Inheriting the nature of humour, Only a Joke Can Save Us is a complex, varied and rebellious account of our current times.
With this exhibition, we wish to explore humour as a way of understanding or questioning ourselves in an ever more unsettling world — our desires, fantasies, frustrations and resistance, riffing off everything from the familiar to the absurd.
Featuring ridiculed political figures, the banality of pigeons, dancing in a flood, playful instagram filters and more, these artworks will elicit laughter and offer comfort in bleakness; but also irreverently disrupt and transgress, creating radical resistance in times of uncertainty. Confronted by crisis and trauma, joking and laughing becomes a methodology to explore new conceptions of solidarity, critique and justice.
(PS. Apparently, 😂 is already going out of fashion. Gen Z-ers have instead replaced the ambiguous laugh-cry with a uber-direct, zeitgeisty 💀, a skull as in ‘I’m dead’. After all, the youngest gets the last laugh.)
13/5/21
-
3/7/21
「每個笑話都是一個小小的革命」喬治·奧威爾 (George Orwell)
狂躁的笑聲中嵌入了求助的聲音, 一張臉龐永遠扭曲成哭笑不得的表情符號。😂 於幾年前被選為「牛津詞典年度最佳單詞」,原來是全球範圍內使用最廣泛的「單詞」。😂 最初被稱為「喜極而泣」,現在迅速演變為包含更深層次的複雜性,例如尷尬,無助,和無奈。躺下的眼淚的來源是無發控制的笑聲嗎?還是,笑聲只是苦哭的面具?HahahAhAHahahahahaHALP!
幽默具有特定的時間及空間性;每個引人發笑的笑話都充分揭示了我們的瞬間,世界的現況。幽默亦反映了我們不同文化的變遷,並以無窮的形式,如諷刺、鬧劇、滑稽模仿,模因等等,繼續穿梭社會。
繼承幽默的本質,【只有笑話能挽救我們】是一個對當今時代複雜多變的叛逆描述。這次展覽匯集了九位國際藝術家(蔡寶賢、胡芮、洪正言、小池健輔、Kieran Leach、麥影彤二、閆欣悅、Pow Martinez 和 余政達)。他們探索幽默作為一種在動蕩不安的世界中理解或質疑自己的方式–– 剖
各人的慾望、幻想、挫折、和意志 –– 並從熟悉以至荒誕的事情都汲取靈感。
展覽中的藝術品呈現被嘲諷的政治人物、平庸的鴿子、洪水中舞動的人、嬉戲的Instagram濾鏡等等、一來希望引起觀眾歡笑、在昏暗中提供安慰;但亦同時擾亂和超越社會規範,在飄忽的時代中造新興的抵抗力量。在危機和創傷的時刻,開玩笑和歡笑合二成為思考團結、批判、和正義的新概念的一種方法。
(附言: 顯然,😂 已經過時了。Z世代的年輕人已經用轉直接又貼題的💀了。骷顱頭代替了模棱兩可的笑聲,它直言道:「笑死我了。」
畢竟嘛,最後的笑聲是屬於最年輕的。)