Welcome to the Spinning Factory! / Unfolding: Fabric of Our Life

The Centre for Heritage, Arts and Textile (CHAT) is thrilled to announce its grand opening on March 16, 2019 with a strong line up of programmes that will take place from March 17 to June 30, 2019, including two major exhibitions and one ambitious site-specific installation.

CHAT is a non-profit art centre situated in The Mills, one of the largest privately-initiated heritage conservation projects in Hong Kong which has revitalised the old cotton-spinning mills of Nan Fung Textiles. As the first and the only art institution that specialises in inherited textile legacy in Hong Kong, CHAT will embrace a multidisciplinary approach covering contemporary art, design and heritage, weaving creative experiences for all.

CHAT’s collection encompasses two fundamental categories: objects that have witnessed the heritage and legacy of the local textile industry from 1940s onwards, as well as contemporary artworks by outstanding artists mainly from the Asia-Pacific region.

CHAT’s permanent exhibition at The D. H. Chen Foundation Gallery will present an interactive journey through Hong Kong’s textile industrial history, through various visual experiences, hands-on experiential workshops and communication with the CHAT team. At the same time, CHAT strives to host distinctive and cross-disciplinary exhibitions to the general public, to explore new dialogues of textile subjects through three seasonal exhibitions every year, encompassing contemporary art exhibitions to challenge the conventional idea of textile art in spring; participatory exhibitions and programmes to invite local communities into artistic production for summer; and hosting exhibitions and discussion forums focused on design and innovations in textile and fashion in winter.

On March 17, CHAT will unveil two inaugural exhibitions: Welcome to the Spinning Factory! and Unfolding: Fabric of Our Life.

Welcome to the Spinning Factory!
To celebrate and visualise the golden age of Hong Kong’s textile industry, Turner Prize-winning architect collective Assemble and design firm HATO, together with CHAT, will present the thoughtfully designed and curated permanent exhibition Welcome to the Spinning Factory! at The D. H. Chen Foundation Gallery at CHAT. The exhibition will showcase over 100 historical exhibits including machines, historical imageries, vintage cotton products, archival documents and other commemorative objects, alongside a workshop space where visitors may take part in manual cotton-spinning activities.

Exhibition Design: Assemble
Exhibition Graphic Design: HATO

Unfolding: Fabric of Our Life
CHAT’s thematic exhibition Unfolding: Fabric of Our Life will bring together works and performances by 17 contemporary artists and collectives from 12 countries and territories in the Asia-Pacific region. Curated by Takahashi Mizuki, the Co-Director of CHAT, the exhibition resonates with CHAT’s vision, using textile as testimony to facts that have faded in modern history, hidden socio-political agendas and personal and collective experiences of textile labour in the era of accelerated globalisation. Reinvestigating textile materials and techniques in contemporary art, the exhibition aims to stimulate visitors’ imagination regarding the unsung labourers behind textile production. 

Artists: Reza Afisina / Aoyama Satoru / Movana Chen / contact Gonzo / Ade Darmawan / Huang Po-Chih / Jung Yeondoo / Liu Chuang / Pangrok Sulap / Raquel Ormella / Alma Quinto / Norberto Roldan / Mark Salvatus / Dayanita Singh / Jakkai Siributr / Vo Tran Chau / Heidi Voet

Curator: Takahashi Mizuki