TRANSITION


Transitions manifest before a turn. They are the in-between: the progression, the regression, the metamorphosis that transpire ahead of change. As intermissions, transitions are forgotten because they are so brief—neglected, because all eyes have shifted to what has transpired. As extended lulls, transitions offer space for rumination, guided by the transformation in sight. As indefinite pauses, they trap one in limbo, where the only constant is uncertainty.

In literature, transitions signal change, bonding rows of text together as one. In science, they are the movement from one state of matter to another. In nature, transitions are the graduation from one stage in a life cycle to another; the cumulation of air, heat and moisture ahead of a storm; the moment before a child is born.

Across the globe, diplomatic affiliations are shifting; governments are changing hands; energy systems are inching towards sustainability; alternate gender identities and sexualities are preparing for their time to shine. Meanwhile, the lives of millions of displaced individuals continue to be put on hold. In Hong Kong, a transition occurred when a fishing village morphed into a metropolis; when its sovereignty was transferred from Britain to China; when autonomy was brought into question. The transfer of sovereignty came with the promise to leave the city unchanged for five decades—but in a city of transition, any promise of changelessness could sound empty. For the rest of us, transitions simply mean the progression from one life stage to the next; waiting in one line after another, constantly transitioning, until we wander into the queue for a final resting place.

We now invite you to capture the shift, the transformation, and experience the in-between—however fleeting, however endless, they may be.


Zoher Abdoolcarim

Based in Hong Kong, Zoher Abdoolcarim was appointed as Asia Editor, TIME International, in June 2008 overseeing TIME’s award-winning Asia edition. Prior to this role, he was a senior editor at TIME Asia, a position he held since 2002 where he helped shape all aspects of TIME’s coverage of Asia. His cover stories include a June 2007 article on the 10th anniversary of the British handover of Hong Kong to China, a November 2011 lead essay comparing China and India, and a prologue on India ahead of its landmark May 2014 elections. Zoher also writes commentary on Asian affairs for TIME.

Prior to joining TIME Asia, Zoher was managing editor of Asiaweek and an editor at Singapore-owned Asian Business. Over the course of his career, Zoher has been a foreign correspondent based in Indonesia, Malaysia and Singapore, with reporting assignments in the Philippines, India, Brunei and Hong Kong. He has been involved in watershed Asia stories including the Ninoy Aquino assassination, the ousters of Ferdinand Marcos in the Philippines and former Indonesian President Suharto, the Tiananmen Square crackdown in Beijing, Hong Kong’s handover to China, the Asian financial crisis and the continuing impact of the rise of China on the region and the world.

Over the years, Zoher has interviewed many of Asia’s leaders. An ethnic Indian born and raised in Hong Kong, Zoher is a fluent Cantonese speaker and a British national. He graduated from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Jacqueline Francis

Jacqueline Francis, Ph.D., is a writer, curator, art historian, and educator. She is the author of Making Race: Modernism and “Racial Art” in America (2012). With Ruth Fine, she co-edited Romare Bearden: American Modernist (2011). With Kathy Zarur, she co-curated the contemporary art exhibition “Where Is Here” for the Museum of the Diaspora in 2016-17.

Francis presently serves on the Advisory Boards of Panorama: Art and Visual Culture of the United States, Third Text: Critical Perspectives on Contemporary Art and Culture, and San Francisco’s Luggage Store Gallery. She is also Board President of the Queer Cultural Center (QCC), a resource and site for LGBT artistic expression in San Francisco.

Francis is an Associate Professor and Chair of the Graduate Program in Visual and Critical Studies at the California College of the Arts in San Francisco.

Yumi Goto

Yumi Goto is an independent photography curator, editor, researcher, consultant, educator and publisher who focuses on the development of cultural exchanges that transcend borders.

She collaborates with local and international artists who live and work in areas affected by conflict, natural disasters, current social problems, human rights abuses and women’s issues. She often works with human rights advocates, international and local NGOs, humanitarian organizations and as well as being involved as a nominator and juror for the international photographic organizations, festivals and events.
She is now based in Tokyo and also a co-founder and curator for the Reminders Photography Stronghold which is a curated membership gallery space in Tokyo enabling a wide range of photographic activities.

Leung Po Shan, Anthony

Belonging to the last generation of university of students under the colonial rule, Leung studied Fine Arts at the Chinese University of Hong Kong but witnessed the Handover as a reporter. Weaving through art and politics, she teaches, writes, researches, cooks, meditates and takes to the streets. She was a member of Para/Site Art Space and In-Media (Hong Kong). Currently, she is a PhD candidate in Cultural Studies at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. Her research interests include, among others, artistic labour, city space and cultural politics. Her essays and commentaries have been published in the Hong Kong Economic Journal, InMedia (Hong Kong), City Magazine, Leap, etc. Publications edited by her include Modern Art in a Colony: Narrated by Hon Chi-fan at the Millennium, Odd One In: Hong Kong Diary (by Pak Sheung-cheun), QK – Specimen Collection of Chan Yuk Keung, The Red Twenty-years of Ricky Yeung Sau-churk etc.

Profile Picture by Topaz Leung

Kevin WY Lee

Kevin WY Lee is a photographer and creative director based in Singapore. He participates vigorously in photography and art across the region as a practitioner, curator, producer and editor. In 2010, he founded Invisible Photographer Asia (IPA), an influential platform for Photography & Visual Arts in Asia. Kevin has been a curator and nominator for various festivals and programs, including the Angkor Photo Festival, Prix Pictet Award and PhotoQuai Biennale. He has also served as a jury for international competitions including the Feature Shoot Emerging Photography Awards, Singapore Creative Circle Awards, and Kuala Lumpur International Photoawards. Most recently, he authored the photobook Suddenly The Grass Became Greener.

Gladys Li

Gladys Li studied law at and graduated from Cambridge University. She was called to the Bar of England and Wales after which she practised as a barrister in chambers in London for 10 years before returning home to Hong Kong in 1982 where she entered full-time practice as a barrister. Shortly thereafter, she became a member of the Bar Council.

Her professional practice in human rights and administrative law began when she acted for Vietnamese asylum-seekers in the late 1980s and early 1990s. At the same time, she took a keen interest in Hong Kong’s future after the Joint Declaration and became a member of the Lobby Group set up to inform British MPs about the importance of the rule of law in Hong Kong, the absence of human rights protections and the lack of democracy.   In 1995 and 1996, she became Chairperson of the Hong Kong Bar Association.

As a member of the Article 23 Concern Group set up with fellow lawyers, she contributed to writing pamphlets to inform the public about the criminal offences  which the HKSAR was expected to legislate for under the Basic Law Article 23.   

She is a founding member of Civic Party and a member of HK2020, of which Mrs. Anson Chan, former chief secretary, is the convener.

She co-authored a chapter on the legal status of Functional Constituencies in “Functional Constituencies A Unique Feature of the Hong Kong Legislative Council”, published by Hong Kong University Press in 2006 and has appeared in cases before and after the handover challenging aspects of the functional constituency system of election.

She continues to practise in the field of constitutional and administrative law and human rights.  She is also a member of the Board of Civic Exchange. 

Sandra S. Phillips

Sandra S. Phillips is Curator Emerita of Photography at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. She has been with the museum since 1987, and assumed the position of Senior Curator in 1999. In 2017 she assumed the position of Curator Emerita. Phillips has organized numerous critically acclaimed exhibitions of modern and contemporary photography including Exposed: Voyeurism, Surveillance and the Camera Since 1870Diane Arbus RevelationsHelen LevittDorothea Lange: American PhotographsDaido Moriyama: Stray DogCrossing the Frontier: Photographs of the Developing WestPolice Pictures: The Photograph as Evidence and An Uncertain Grace: Sebastião Salgado. She holds degrees from the City University of New York (Ph.D.), Bryn Mawr College (M.A.), and Bard College (B.A.). Phillips was previously curator at the Vassar College Art Museum, and has taught at various institutions including the State University of New York, New Paltz; Parsons School of Design; San Francisco State University; and the San Francisco Art Institute. She was a Resident at the American Academy in Rome and received a grant from The Japan Foundation in 2000.

Lisa Botos

Lisa Botos is a cultural producer, curator and photo editor. Based in Singapore, she founded Botos., an arts-related, project-orientated initiative with a focus on advisory, curatorial projects and publishing. In 2008 she co-founded Ooi Botos, a contemporary art gallery in Hong Kong. Prior, Lisa was Picture Editor for Time magazine in Asia. With her team and international photographers, they developed award-winning commissions. Lisa served as an international curator for the Vladivostok Biennale of Visual Arts 2013 and as an advisor for Photo Shanghai. She was an editorial ambassador for Punctum, a pan-Asian photography journal.

An advisor to the WMA Masters from 2011-2016, she counselled on the development and management of the awards program. Lisa is a 2015 Fellow of the University of Hong Kong-Clore Advanced Cultural Leadership Programme, an associate curator for Artist Pension Trust (APT), a consultant for the Foundation for the Exhibition of Photography (FEP) and on the board of The VII Foundation.

Abby Chen

Abby Chen is currently the Curator and Artistic Director at the Chinese Culture Foundation of San Francisco. She initiated the Xian Rui/Fresharp Artist Excellence Series since 2008, the first of its kind in the country supporting mid-career artists of Chinese descent in US. In 2009, she launched Present Tense Biennial. In 2010, she organized Gender Identity Symposium, a multi-city forum in Guangzhou, Beijing and Shanghai, followed by the 2011 exhibition WOMEN我們 (Shanghai, San Francisco, and Miami). Her most recent project is the social practice based experiment in San Francisco neighborhood with Keywords School and Social Botany, led by artist Xu Tan with support from San Francisco Art Commission and National Endowment for the Arts.

Her other curatorial ventures include Moment For Ink, challenging nationalism and sexism in traditional Chinese Painting. The exhibition opened in various sites including Asian Art Museum, San Francisco State University, and traveled to Zhejiang Art Museum in China. She has curated or had loan her exhibition to Yerba Buena Center For the Arts and Museum of Chinese in America in New York. Beginning in 2009, she also led and managed San Francisco Public Art Initiative of Arts-in-Storefront and Central Subway Temporary Public Art for Stockton Station, as well as Culture Mapping, to investigate arts in immigrant neighborhood and advocate for city funding on underserved communities.

In 2012, Abby Chen was Summer Scholar from the National Endowment for the Humanities. She graduates with Master of Arts in Visual and Critical Studies from California College of the Arts.

Fung Ho Yin

Fung Ho-yin has pursued professional education and training in photography and different areas of design in Hong Kong and UK. He is now working as Assistant Professor at the School of Design of The Hong Kong Polytechnic University.

Creating art via alternative photographic processes is his specialism. He has been exhibiting locally and internationally, including Australia, Japan, UK, USA, France, Thailand and China. He held his first solo exhibition of Gum Prints in UK in 2007. He was selected as finalists of National Prints Exhibition (China), International Competition – Printmaking (Philadelphia, USA), and The International Print & Drawing Exhibition (Thailand). His works have been acquired and collected by The Hong Kong Heritage Museum, and museums in China including Shenzhou Print Museum of Sichuan, Gwei Yang Art Museum, Qingdao Art Museum, Shanghai Art Museum, Guangdong Museum of Art and the Shenzhen University.

Ho-yin was elected into the Executive Committee of The Hong Kong Graphics Society from 2001 to 2009. He also co-founded the only open print art studio in Hong Kong in 2000 – The Hong Kong Open Printshop (HKOP), an open printshop to promote visual arts with an emphasis on image making and to provide art services to the public, including the annual Hong Kong Graphic Art Fiesta.

Frank Kalero

Kalero has a Media Communication degree from Pompeu Fabra University in Barcelona. Former resident at Benetton’s Fabrica (Italy). Founder of the OjodePez magazine (Spain), co-founder of Invaliden1 Galerie (Berlin), of the art magazine The World According To (Berlin), and the pan-Asian photography magazine, Punctum (India). He directed the Ojodepez Photo Meeting Barcelona. For three years he was the art director of the GetxoPhoto Festival (Bilbao). At the present is part of the team developing an online platform for new media called SCREEN. He has been part of the WYNG Photo Award jury team for the past three years (Hong Kong). He was the Artistic Director for the 4th and 5th Biennial PhotoQuai, held at the Museum Quai Branly (Paris). Cofounder of photo festival, GoaPhoto (Panajim, India). He has been teaching at the Joop Swart Masterclass 2014. In 2015, he was invited by the Armenian government to make a collective exhibition on Genocide, on the occasion of the 100 years of the Armenian Genocide. Also in the same year, he was the chairman of the World Pride Award Jury (Amsterdam).

Christine Loh

Christine Loh has a long interest and association with the arts. She sat onthe boards of the Hong Kong Festival Fringe, Hong Kong Arts Centre and Chung Ying Theatre Company in the 1980s, was instrumental in the formation of the Hong Kong Arts Development Council in her role as a legislator in the 1990s, including serving as its first vice-chairperson. She is a private collector and a published author of many works on a variety of subjects.

Loh is a lawyer by training and a commodities trader by profession. She was a member of the Hong Kong Legislative Council (1992-1997 and 1998-2000), the co-founder and CEO of the non-profit think tank, Civic Exchange (2000-2012) and the former Under Secretary for the Environment (2012-2017). She was also a founder director of WYNG Foundation. Currently, she is Adjunct Professor at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, and a director of the Robert HN Ho Family Foundation.