Garden of Six Seasons

Garden of Six Seasons
May 16–August 30, 2020

Downstairs at Para Site, the secrets in the back room might be more hidden than they appear at first. Even more, at the exhibition’s temporary station in Sheung Wan, you will enter a secret garden, artificial like any other, but perhaps colder. Like the way medicine sees more than the inside of our bodies, and mapping the world draws both more and less than what really exists in the terrain, unseen by humans, gardens are themselves small visions of both a human organism and of the entire universe. Tending to a garden is akin to healing a body and to keeping a cosmic balance. But gardens were seen very differently across continents: implausible symmetric rows of calming but petty harmony, serene surfaces of water dividing the world in unreal halves, mountains and waterfalls and oceans no bigger than a gravesite, savagery hidden in a manor’s lawn, or gardens built by runaway slaves, summoning the landscapes of the home continent, its crops, knowledge, and beauty.

As you face the tall wall of mirrors on the longest side of the exhibition, you see that the world there closes in on itself, quite uncomfortably. Gardens are also set apart by how we live and move in them. There are gardens where empires organize their entire universe with millions of us lost amongst the weeds, and others where lovers frolic about carefree, or lovers-to-be cruise each other, aroused among secret succulent leaves, fondling and fucking under the damp dark canopies. Other gardens however, are solitary rooms, where scholars painstakingly stage their knowledge of everything alive and dead, weeding and pruning around the stones with their tired hands. And then there are the gardens of our darkest nightmares, the gardens of loneliness in our own inner world, bereft of any human touch, beneath our burning, febrile thorax.

Pacita Abad, Korakrit Arunanondchai, Bibhusan Basnet & Pooja Gurung, Chang En-Man, Mae Clark, Mary Dhapalany, Patrizio Di Massimo, Izmail Efimov, Charles Gaines, Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster, Julia Mage'au Gray, Sheroanawe Hakihiiwe, Hao Liang, Andrew Thomas Huang, Hung Fai & Wai Pong Yu, Sudhira Karna, Vvzela Kook, Emma Kunz, Lam Tung Pang, Liu Chuang, Liu Kuo-Sung, Madhumala Mandal, Rebati Mandal, Britta Marakatt-Labba, Ana Mendieta, Pavel Mikushev, J.D. 'Okhai Ojeikere,Uriel Orlow, Pan Lu & Bo Wang, Antonio Pichilla, John Pule, Komal Purbe, Naufus Ramirez-Figueroa, Ashmina Ranjit, Citra Sasmita, Ekaram Singh, So Wing Po, Katerina Teaiwa, Batsa Gopal Vaidya, Brittney Leeanne Williams, and Trevor Yeung

Garden of Six Seasons is a precursor to the Kathmandu Triennale 2077 (Artistic Director: Cosmin Costinas; Curators: Sheelasha Rajbhandari and Hit Man Gurung). The works of Izmail Efimov, Britta Marakatt-Labba, and Pavel Mikushev have been included with the crucial curatorial advice and support of Anders Kreuger.

Alongside artist fees to all participating artists, Para Site is offering medical and dental insurance coverage for Hong Kong artists in the exhibition, generously made possible by the following supporters: Katie De Tilly, Dave Chapman, Chantal Wong, Yuk King Tan, Crystal Chen, and those who wish to remain anonymous.

Para Site Art Space is financially supported by the Art Development Matching Grants Scheme of the Government of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region. The content of these activities does not reflect the views of the Government of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region.