One Suitcase Per Person presents three ‘generations’ of Chinese artists, David Diao, Ken Lum and Hiram To, who began making art between 1960s and 1980s, and whose practices span Abstract Modernism, Conceptual and Post-conceptualism.

Taking the title of a painting by David Diao as a starting point, One Suitcase Per Person is an interpretation of a public notice seen by Diao before boarding the plane as a child as he fled the turmoil of the Chinese Civil War in 1949. The exhibition questions whether the nature of identity is fluid and interchangeable, shaped by cultural circumstance and upbringing, or whether identity is static and non-negotiable.

One Suitcase Per Person brings together three artists whose histories are disparate but ultimately sharing a common sensibility, particularly in their choice of aesthetic and conceptual goals. With cultural trajectories spanning China, Hong Kong, United States, Canada and Australia, Diao and Lum, in particular, are groundbreaking pioneers in their practices, essentially they are ‘Chinese contemporary artists’ before such a term was coined, or accruing particularly cultural meanings and significance as we know of today.

Referencing physical migration, the many permutations of cultural migration and acculturation, One Suitcase Per Person presents Diao’s series of paintings Da Hen Li House, Lum’s photographic series Schnitzel Company and To’s new photo- based pieces Fortune Landscapes.

The works by these artists are untypically ‘Chinese’ in what the public today may assume ‘Chinese art’ to be. Exposing Hong Kong audiences to this wider debate, One Suitcase Per Person will also offer the Hong Kong public unprecedented access to the works of these internationally renowned artists and to the artists themselves by bringing them to Hong Kong to participate in the exhibition and a talk that is being planned.