Between Image and Index
Between Image and Index
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Located at the Communication and Visual Arts Building of Hong Kong Baptist University in Kowloon Tong, the Koo Ming Kown Exhibition Gallery serves as a key exhibition platform for contemporary art, research, and interdisciplinary exchange. The space supports experimental curatorial practices and dialogues between local and international artists, scholars, and students within Hong Kong’s evolving cultural landscape.
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Situated within Hong Kong Baptist University’s Kai Tak Campus, AVA Gallery is a contemporary art space dedicated to exhibitions, site-responsive projects, and cross-disciplinary collaboration. Located in the rapidly transforming Kai Tak district, the gallery occupies a site shaped by the historical legacy of the former Kai Tak Airport, once one of Hong Kong’s most iconic infrastructures connecting the city to global networks of movement and exchange. Today, within the context of Kai Tak’s urban redevelopment, the gallery functions as a platform linking artistic practice, urban transformation, and public engagement through diverse local and international programs.
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Ana Paula dos Santos, Benedikt Ackermann, Bill Becker, Chan Sai Lok 阿三, Chan See Kwong Ray 陳思光, Cheong Kin Man & Marta Stanisława Sala 張健文 & 瑪打沙律, Du Kunxiao Rose 杜坤曉, Foreseen Agency (Chan Kachi & Wong Wing Shan Pat 陳家智 & 黃詠珊), Jiang Suxuan 姜蘇軒, Tobias Klein 簡鳴謙, Lai Mei Kei 黎美琪, Lai Long Sang 黎朗生, Gerry Li 李嘉睿, Li Jiaxin 李佳昕, Law Yuen Ying Lola 羅苑櫻, Lin Htet Aung 敖林德, Liu Zexuan 劉澤軒, Man Ching Ying Phoebe 文晶瑩, Mari Kalabegashvili, Nina Nadig, Peter Nelson 彼得倪森, Qin Miaosheng Bard 秦苗升, Samuel Swope, Shen Shaomin 沈少民, PRS (Picture Rhythm Studios), Daniel Stempfer, Tam Wai Ping Lukas 譚偉平, Tomás Maglione, Tse Chun Sing 謝俊昇, Tom O'Dea, Sunny Wang 王鈴蓁, Wong Wo Bik 王禾璧, Zhang Shi Fei 張時飛
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Chief Curator: Janet Fong Man Yee 方敏兒
Curator: Yang Tong 楊桐Curatorial Team: Yuriy Lee Yu Suen 李雨璇, Charlotte Li 李晞琳
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Poster Design: Wenching You
Photo Documentation: Kawing Wong and AVA HKBU
Supporters :
Consulate General of the Republic of Poland in Hong Kong, Goethe Institut Hong Kong, School of Creative Media - City University of Hong Kong, Shenzhen University Meng architects, Republic Portuguesa, Fundacao para a Ciencia e a Tecnologia (Foundation for science and technology), Centro Científico e Cultural de Macau (Macau science and cultural Center ), Po Leung Kuk, International Art Exchange, Fenwick Pier
Equipment Sponsor : Epson
Refreshment Sponsor: Giando Group, Gia Trattoria Italiana
Between Image and Index is the Parallel Exhibition of AVA HKBU in cultural partnership with Art Basel Hong Kong 2026
In an era shaped by the abundance of images across material and technological environments, our relationship with pictorial forms has become increasingly contingent. Images are encountered less as stable representations than as agents that mediate experience, authority, and meaning across shifting contexts. This condition invites a recalibration of how pictorial structures operate today, and how perception is shaped not only through visual form, but also through circulation, transformation, material grounding, and the production of imagery across contexts.
Rooted in the Latin pictus, meaning “depicted”, pictoriality has historically described the articulation of the visible world through images. Yet it has never functioned solely through representation which has always been entangled with material and cultural conditions. Today, these pictorial languages are reconfigured through accelerated circulation, technological mediation, and shifting material foundation. Extending beyond the domain of visual art, pictoriality operates across broader social and cultural frameworks, shaping collective experience and influencing how visual material is recognized as evidence, information, memory, or truth, as well as how attention and belief are organized in everyday life.
The exhibition unfolds as an in-between space of imagery and its residual traces, responding to its reconfigured condition, and proposing a way of perceiving it beyond representational closure. Remaining in active dialogue with the diverse artistic practices presented, it identifies a state in which this condition operates under heightened tension, where meaning no longer stabilizes through representation alone, but emerges through ongoing negotiation between material presence and indexical registers, as well as between the visible and the invisible. Within this framework, traces, material contact, and spatial situations shape the production of meaning, articulated through spatial and object-based practices, image-making processes, and technologically mediated forms.
Bringing together 33 artists and artist groups based in Hong Kong, Macau, Shenzhen, Frankfurt am Main, Berlin, Lisbon, Kraków and Katowice, Between Image and Index takes shape across Koo Ming Kown Gallery in Kowloon Tong and AVA Gallery at the Kai Tak Campus, forming a distributed spatial constellation. In dialogue with the spatial and perceptual conditions of Art Basel’s main hall, these sites function as situated fields in which meaning unfolds through encounter, movement, and embodied experience.
身處於一個由物質與科技環境中大量影像所形塑的時代，我們與圖像形式之間的關係變得不再確定。所見之物不再主要作為穩定的再現形式而被理解，而是逐漸成為在不同脈絡中調解經驗、權力與意義的中介。這一轉變促使我們重新審視當代圖像結構的運作方式，並反思覺知的產生並非僅僅透過視覺形式本身，在這一過程中同時參與的還有影像的流通、轉化、物質基礎，以及其在不同背景中的圖像生產。
「圖像性」（pictoriality）一詞源自拉丁文 pictus，意指「被描繪之物」，歷來用以描述透過影像對可見世界的構成。然而，圖像性從未僅僅透過再現來發揮作用，它始終與物質條件與文化脈絡交織共構。當下，這些圖像語言在加速的流通機制、科技介入以及不斷轉變的物質基礎之中被重新配置。圖像性亦不僅僅作用於視覺藝術的範疇，而是運作於更廣泛的社會與文化的集體經驗之中，並影響視覺材料如何被辨識為證據、資訊、記憶或現實，同時也影響著我們日常生活中注意力與信念。
本展覽回應圖像性被重新配置後所呈現的狀態, 作為一個中介空間而展開, 是位於顯像與其背後的作證、痕跡以及索引之間的中間態。強調一種超越再現封閉性的觀看與感知方式。展覽與所呈現的多樣藝術實踐保持一種處於張力之中的積極對話。——在此，意義不再僅透過再現而得以確定，而是經由物質在場與索引性機制之間、可見與不可見之間持續協商而生成。在這一脈絡下，痕跡、物質接觸與空間情境共同塑造意義的生成過程，並透過空間與物件導向的實踐、影像生成過程，以及科技中介形式加以呈現。
《顯像與索引之間》匯聚33個現居香港、澳門、深圳、法蘭克福、柏林、里斯本、克拉科夫和卡托維茲的藝術家與藝術家團體，於九龍塘顧明均展覽廳與啟德校園 AVA 畫廊之間展開，構成一個分佈式的空間。這些場域與巴塞爾藝術主展館的場域形成對話，作為具體而情境化的場所，使意義透過行動與身體經驗的相遇而逐步展現。