CERTAINLY, But For Whom?

Text:  Tiffany Chung

Perhaps it is time to turn the corner, spatially and literally.

With its matte-gold exterior and murals by the instantly recognisable local artist Lousy along the pedestrian walkway leading to 42 Wong Chuk Hang Road, CERTAINLY began before one even steps into the space. A play on the title, in more ways than one. 

Inspired by American artist-composer La Monte Young's 1960 "score", Composition 1960 #10, which reads simply: "Draw a straight line and follow it." GOLD by Serakai Studio, positions itself as a trifecta - an exhibition space, incubator and gathering point for creatives to experiment. This inaugural group show brings together 11 artists from diverse backgrounds, cultures and media, situating itself strategically in the booming Island South neighbourhood and, on the grander scheme of events, within the much-anticipated hustle and bustle of Art March Hong Kong 2026.

Follow aside. Read between the lines.

The unblemished entry, with its speckle-free ambience and polished concrete flooring, could initially leave one assuming the feel of yet another intimidating white-cube space. Fear not, the turn of events quickly surprises. A short corridor, lined with handwritten forewords, eases the arrival and unfolds into a monochromatic, liminal space that feels refreshing and boundless, with no walls or partitions to interrupt the mind's wandering.

The conscious application of spatial design is evident here: direct projections, the play on lines, visuals, texture, words, sounds, and modern displays to let the work speak not as a didactic exercise but as an experiment in shared uncertainty. It is a deliberate choice to let visitors become part of the exhibition itself, without quite knowing what to expect next.

Mostly in awe, I found myself drifting between the diverse placements of works. Maria Taniguchi's Brick Drawings (2017), with their white lines contrasted against black, sit somewhere between conceptual art and a meditation on artistic labour and the quiet passage of time. They juxtapose against Video Sculptures (2026) by Young-Hae Chang Heavy Industries, where avatar characters in rapid-fire dialogue probe questions of art, technology, AI and humanity. The effect teeters on the edge of information overload, close to desensitisation, but not quite.

Delineating conundrums.

Santiago Sierra's 250 CM Line Tattooed on Six Remunerated People (1999) stood out, positioned next to Tozer Pak Sheung Chuen's text-shapes of resonant prose, demonstrating the many agonies of modern living. Projections of the six individuals appeared at full body length, inviting viewers to witness the entire work unfold at eye-level. Sierra paid six people to stand in a human chain and have a single continuous line tattooed across their backs. The work is blunt in its message: capitalism does not merely abstract labour, it marks the body permanently. Anyone with "skin in the game", quite literally. 

It rang a bell, and not a comfortable one, about exploitation, human capital, and the limits of the lines we draw. I drew parallels to my last visit to David Zwirner Hong Kong at H Queen's, where Francis Alÿs's Painting/Retoque (2008) traced a similar preoccupation. In that work, Alÿs meticulously repainted sixty yellow median strips on a road inside the former U.S.-controlled Panama Canal Zone. The 8-minute, 31-second film documents the gesture as both a poetic and political, reflecting on territorial division and the possibility of repair. 

Where Alÿs inserted his body into public space and its histories, the works in CERTAINLY remained within GOLD, and perhaps that is where a more complicated question begins to settle in.

March madness in Hong Kong now arrives with its own seasonal pass, a procession of fairs and openings that the city has learned to perform rather well, generating considerable noise across the APAC region, and prompting the idea of a blossoming contemporary art scene. Yet while many locals or travelers may remain unfamiliar with the arts and cultural pockets scattered through districts like Sham Shui Po or the quieter outskirts of the New Territories, that absence feels like part of the point: the scene most visibly on display each March belongs to a narrower geography altogether.

Art Basel Hong Kong, which grew out of Art HK after its acquisition by MCH Group in 2013, anchors that geography alongside satellite fairs such as Affordable Art Fair and gallery clusters at H Queen's and Wong Chuk Hang, all performing cultural vitality with increasing confidence. And yet the question of whom this growth truly reaches, and to whom it speaks, remains unresolved. Affordable Art Fair's own premise - that price alone is the barrier to entry, rather than the fluency required to read what hangs on the walls - perhaps reveals more about the limits of accessibility than it intends to. Art Basel's own figures, ironically, comes to an uncanny 1 percent: approximately 91,500 visitors set against Hong Kong's population.

This is not without theoretical precedent. Decades earlier, Adorno and Horkheimer anticipated that once culture is produced and circulated at industrial velocity, it ceases to function as a vessel for meaning and is reconstituted instead as a commodity- its value lying solely in its capacity to be exchanged, displayed, and consumed. Hong Kong's art month performs this logic in miniature: an efficient apparatus of fairs and openings that manufactures the sensation of cultural vitality, irrespective of whether anyone leaves having genuinely metabolised what they saw. What circulates is visibility rather than comprehension. Art rendered as inventory, as content, as something whose primary function is simply to have been seen. 

Bourdieu's account of cultural capital sharpens the point. Appreciation of Art is never neutral or universally accessible; it depends on dispositions cultivated through education and prior exposure. This very fluency allows GOLD’s viewers to read Sierra's tattooed line as a meditation on labour and capital, while others register only a striking image. Art Month, as international spectacle, redistributes little of that fluency. If anything, the sheer density and speed of March's programming rewards those already initiated, while leaving the rest – the ~99 percent not counted among this year's visitors – to encounter the same works as exhibit rather than dialogue.

CERTAINLY, for its part, makes a genuine effort at openness, in its spatial generosity, its mix of media and voices, and in the very spirit of its premise: follow the line, see where it takes you. This can be felt both in the programming and in the physical openness of the space, which signals GOLD as a beginning rather than a destination – a room where more conversations might yet unfold, perhaps with a wider circle of people over time. It is worth noting that Tobias Berger, co-founder and curatorial director of Serakai Studio, brings with him a wealth of curatorial experience from Para Site, M+ and most recently, Tai Kwun, along with a particular institutional fluency, sensitivity and above all, a belief in art as a space for genuine dialogue. Whether this invitation fully extends beyond those already fluent in contemporary art, or whether it remains, like the wider March calendar, a finely produced conversation among the already-fluent, is a question worth sitting with. Not as a criticism, but as an open inquiry the show itself seems to invite. 

I did not leave empty-handed, but with an issue of cong and a nice poster to take home. Small gestures, but certain ones.

P.S. During his panel at Art Basel Hong Kong 2026, Berger reflected on the shift from public institution to private initiative, noting that ventures like Serakai are backed by individuals with both the capital and the cultural fluency to move quickly, unburdened by the slower, more deliberative pace of public institutions. It is a telling admission, one that, even as it explains the space's agility, also quietly underscores the very question of access this piece keeps circling back to. Still, he has spoken of wanting GOLD to contribute something lasting to Wong Chuk Hang and the wider Hong Kong art scene, pointing to the space's unusually long ten-year lease as evidence of a genuine commitment to stay, rather than simply pass through.

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Images provided by Tiffany Chung 

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This piece was written by a participant in 1a space’s ‘Hong Kong Visual Art Criticism Incubation Programme 2025-2026.’ Since 2017, this programme has provided training and publishing opportunities to emerging local art critics.

此文章由1a空間《香港視覺藝術評論培育計劃 2025-2026》學員撰寫。自 2017 年起，1a空間透過此計劃為本地新晉藝術評論人提供培訓及發布作品的機會。