NOWHERE LEFT BUT HERE, HERE I AM AGAIN | 21.03.2025-17.08.2025

nowhere left but here, here i am again is a project in two phases: “nowhere left but here” (begins 21 March) assembles a group of international contemporary artists who use letters, maps, postcards, stamps, and other printed materials as the basis for their work. As mediums often associated with conceptual art practices, their presence here not only serves as a means of corresponding over great distances, but as sites through which to document and share the artists’ most intimate moments.

The second phase, “here I am again” brings in additional publications to complement the landmark exhibition, On Kawara: Rules of Freedom, Freedom of Rules (23 May–17 Aug 2025) at Tai Kwun Contemporary. Co-curated by Hou Hanru and Ying Kwok, it is the first institutional solo presentation of On Kawara’s work in Asia and the first since his passing in 2014, including several of his most iconic series spanning five decades.

In an age where the “self” is endlessly asserted and negated through its presence online, these artists choose “print technology” as a creative tool to communicate. Theirs is an enigmatic, if unending search to capture or “map” connectivity, and to acknowledge times of anxiety through these concrete forms acting as surrogates for themselves and their respective realities. This cartographic impulse not only gives shape to personal encounters with their work but highlights how art in print endures as a mode of self-expression by serving as carriers of our singular and shared experiences.

Project: Sissi Kaplan with Tomson Chan, Sam I-shan, Vanessa Wang, and Cyril Wong

nowhere left but here, here i am again is curated by Ingrid Pui Yee Chu for the Artists’ Book Library at Tai Kwun in collaboration with One Million Years Foundation.

PROGRAMMES

Performance
Artists' Book Library
8-9pm, 28 March 2025
Sissi Kaplan — 77 Days: I am still here

With Sam I-shan and Vivian Wang