Prison Architect takes inspiration from the sombre histories of the Victoria Prison, located in the earliest penal structure complex built in Hong Kong under British colonial rules. Filming on site of the original prison, now the important part of Tai Kwun - the Centre for Heritage and Arts, opened in June 2018 after ten years of restoration work. The two protagonists: a prisoner and an architect living in parallel realities (in the present time and an ambiguous distanced past), conjure up imagination and experiences about imprisonment. And time presents the artist's debate on the relations of humans, the world, and freedom - the visible and the invisible imprisonment, existentialism as a means of self-redemption, and questioning at once the relationship of humans to the space around them. The artist's attempt at reconciliation with the world and human nature.

Prison Architect showing dates during Berlinale:
2019-02-08 20:00 Werkstattkino@silent green
2019-02-12 15:00 Arsenal 1

Cao Fei's art is a study in exuberant ambiguity. Her early works were among the first to tackle the vibrant youth, factory, online, and regional cultures of the Mainland, capturing and reflecting upon the new kinds of human subjects and social relations that its economic transformation was making possible. Neither celebratory nor critical, and always with an eye for the surreal and the fun, her explorations propose characters and scenarios that question larger realities by deviating from them, creating hollows—spaces for suspended reflection—in a fast-moving world full of people, objects, and ideologies.

This exhibition, Cao Fei’s first large institutional exhibition in Asia, revolves around a newly commissioned film that engages directly with Tai Kwun's layered history. Prison Architect unfolds as a poetic dialogue across time between two characters—a prisoner and an architect—who represent the building complex’s past as a police, judicial, and penal institution and its future as a cultural institution. Shown in an installation setting designed to embody this same complexity, the film makes references to colonial history, Hong Kong cinema, and the contemporary on the Mainland and globally, asking if we as viewers might be, like the inmates who inhabited this place before us, waiting indefinitely for trials to come.

Presented by UCCA

Address: 10 Hollywood Road, Central, Hong Kong

More info: Tai Kwun Website