Passaging from Private to Public: The Case of Ha Bik Chuen's Archive in Hong Kong

Abstract

This paper considers how the personal archive of late Hong Kong-based artist Ha Bik Chuen (1925–2009) is continuously reframed as the archive's accessibility becomes increasingly public. Ha's archive was assembled from the 1950s to 2009, spanning the late colonial to early post-handover period in the city, and comprises a wide range of materials from printed matter to photographic materials and book collages. The curatorial and exhibition projects Excessive Enthusiasm: Ha Bik Chuen and the Archive as Practice (2015) and Striated Light (2016) are studied in this paper as case studies where materials from Ha's archive were utilised in ways that instrumentalise the archive, but simultaneously expand its possibility within a larger art ecology. At the same time, this paper examines a selection of materials from Ha's archive, including his collection of periodicals from both sides of the Cold War from the 1960s to the 1970s, which represented Southeast Asia, as well as photographs from his travels to Huangshan (Yellow Mountain) in Anhui and to Manila in 1982. While the periodicals demonstrate how Hong Kong was a conjuncture of contesting Cold War forces at the time, the photographs serve as intimate records that registered his aspirations as both a Chinese literati artist and an [End Page 65] international artist well versed in Euro-American abstract modern art. This paper argues that Ha's archival practice, which threaded the public sphere and his private life, was a way through which he fashioned himself as a cosmopolitan subject in the port city of Hong Kong.