Resilience: Art as Sustainable Change
Moderator
Wallace Chang
Fellow of HKIA; Registered Architect in Hong Kong and China; Associate Professor, School of Architecture, CUHK; Director of the Urban Place Research Unit; Visiting Scholar in Harvard-Yenching Institute, Harvard University; Advisory Committee Member on Revitalization of Historic Buildings. Wallace is both an architectural practitioner and theorist on urban design, cultural conservation and community participation. His award-winning designs range from urban washroom to university academic building. Also, he is a social activist to promote a civil consciousness on urban environment, community conservation and sustainable planning, including his recent advocacy on the redevelopment planning and architecture of Shek Tsai Leng [Dills Corner Garden] Elderly Caring District. He has been conducting research with exhibition in Habitat City and Bamboo Theatre. His latest research, Kai Tak River Green Corridor Community Education Project [HKADC 2013 Award of Arts Education, International Award for Public Art 2015], focuses on cultural identity and urban sustainability issues during the urban transformation process in Hong Kong and southern Chinese cities. To recognize his contribution to the promotion of cultural conservation, he was awarded Certificate of Commendation by the Secretary for Home Affairs in 2015.
Panel Speakers
Thiago Mundano
Mundano is a Brazilian street artist and activist whose work makes people stop and think about the issues swirling around them everyday. In 2007, he began using his graffiti skills to paint "carroças," the wooden and metal carts used by the trash collectors throughout Brazil who haul off junk and recyclables. He painted 200 carroças and in the process made these invisible superheroes visible—not only in the streets, but also in the media. The effort led to "Pimp My Carroça," which made this initiative do-it-yourself, crowdfunded and global. It has brought in 170 trash collectors in cities around the world, teaming them up with 200 street artists and 800 volunteers. It is quickly becoming a movement.
Thiago Mundano will speak about the project Pimp My Carroça which is selected as one of the 7 finalists of the 2017 IAPA.
Katia Canton
Katia Canton is a writer, artist and curator born in São Paulo, Brazil where she currently lives. She is an Associate Professor of Contemporary Art at University of São Paulo since 1994 and vice-director of the Museum of Contemporary Art, since 2014. She holds a PhD in Interdisciplinary Arts from New York University and a Diplôme of French Literature from Université de Nancy II. She has written around 45 books on art and stories, for adults and children, and won many literary prizes in Brazil and in the U.S.
As a curator, she has worked in many projects in Brazil and internationally Among them, she was guest curator for the 24-São Paulo Bienal in 1998 and curator of the Brazilian artistas for a major international exhibition called L´Art Dans le Monde 2000, in Paris.
As an art critic she has written for many publications worldwide, particularly for Artforum magazine, where she has been guest editor in São Paulo for many years. As an artist, her research on fairy tales and the feminine has been shown in many museums, cultural centers and galleries.
Craig Cooper
Craig Cooper is a Hong Kong based artist, born in UK, 1984. Cooper is the co-editor of UK/HK journal Madame Wang and founder of the exhibition cycle Urban Exotic Dilemma which includes performance events, publications and exhibitions. Cooper studied MA Fine Art at Central St Martins, London between 2006/7.