The Factory

Artists have taken over former industrial buildings in Hong Kong’s Fo Tan district, transforming the area from a manufacturing backwater into a buzzing creative community. Six of them—both long-term “Fotanians” and newcomers—open the doors to their studios

By Oliver Giles.

CHOW CHUN-FAI Painter Chow Chun-fai was one of the first artists to move into Fo Tan’s factory buildings. “Having a studio in Hong Kong has always been a luxury,” he says. “But when I graduated from Chinese University of Hong Kong in 2003, it was the middle of the Sars crisis, so it was very cheap.” Even so, he couldn’t afford a space of his own, so shared his first studio with two friends. “We used to discuss how artists in Hong Kong had reversed western art history,” he recalls. “In the west, artists would often work in a studio first, doing paintings and drawings, then [later in their career] would explore other media like installation and performance. In Hong Kong, having a studio was always too expensive, so in…

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Tatler Hong Kong (Digital) - 1 Issue, March 2020

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