Para Site, Hong Kong’s leading non-profit contemporary art centre, is excited to announce James Taylor-Foster as its next Executive Director. The appointment coincides with Para Site’s 30th anniversary, signalling a new phase in the organisation’s evolution as a platform for independent expression and artistic experimentation in Hong Kong, across the region, and internationally.
"Para Site is one of a kind. Its roots as an artist-founded cultural space, born from a unique condition with local and regional creative scenes as its engine, remains its soul," says James Taylor-Foster. "Today, as then, contemporary art is our present interrogating itself. At its most powerful, it makes room for thinking in public and radiates outward into culture at large."
James's practice bridges contemporary art, design, architecture, and digital culture. As a convenor and curator he blurs disciplinary boundaries, exploring unconventional ways of nurturing institutions and their audiences. This expansive approach is both greenhouse and staging ground: cultivating emergent ideas for wider cultural spheres while building ambitious platforms for assembling many forms of making into new ways of seeing, feeling, and imagining. His work shines light on how creativity continually reimagines our world—shaping popular culture and public life.
"As Para Site marks its 30th anniversary, we’re focused on what the institution must become in the decades ahead,” says Alan Lo, Chair of Para Site’s Board. “James brings a rare combination of curatorial imagination and institutional stewardship. His practice is rooted in the contemporary yet firmly focused on the future: how institutions can shift their centres to stay alive and relevant, how culture moves across borders and disciplines. This is precisely the thinking that Para Site needs as it enters its next chapter."
"Para Site was founded thirty years ago by artists who believed Hong Kong deserved a space that was genuinely independent, genuinely curious, and wholeheartedly committed to the art of its time," Lo continues. "That spirit has never left us. We owe it to our next generation of artists, audiences, and communities to ask what Para Site could be in the decades ahead—not just what it has been. James's appointment is our answer to that question."
"Cultural leadership today means listening closely, facilitating generously, and imagining with courage," says James. "Holding this ground means nurturing the heart of this storied institution towards a place that mediates culture in its broadest sense. In a moment marked by uncertainty and possibility, Para Site and its communities serve as a context in which care and risk can coexist hand in hand with experimentation—where emerging artists, curators, audiences and ideas come together in ways that are rigorous, playful, and provocative."
For James, "Para Site's role in Hong Kong's cultural ecosystem—close to the streets, close to the urgencies of our present, committed to new voices and ideas—is matched by its resonance regionally and around the world. The organisation's next chapter will reaffirm this position, emphasising the ways in which art and culture can be key agents of transformation in society. Such transformation often occurs across disciplines through surprising alliances and unlikely solidarities."
On behalf of the Board, Lo adds that "throughout the open, global recruitment process we have been struck by James's desire to understand Hong Kong on its own terms—its history, its complexity, its extraordinary creative community. He does not arrive with a fixed vision imported from elsewhere but with deep respect for what has been built here, alongside a desire to listen and grow the organisation with the city and its regional relationships. This combination of bold thinking, unique institutional experience, and genuine humility is rare. We are not looking back; we are building forward. We are enormously excited to do so with James guiding the way."
About James Taylor-Foster
James Taylor-Foster, a curator, writer, and cultural leader, joins Para Site as Executive Director in the summer of 2026. Over the past decade, his curatorial and artistic projects have traced queer belonging, investigated how creativity meets technology and popular culture, and explored the city as an expressive body. His most recent group exhibition—Worldglimpsing (2025–27)—is currently on view at ArkDes/Moderna Museet in Stockholm, with its second chapter opening at the Nieuwe Instituut in Rotterdam later this year. Notable projects and collaborations include WEIRD SENSATION FEELS GOOD: The World of ASMR, (2020-25), presented in 2025 at Gate33/AIRSIDE, Hong Kong; Cruising Pavilion: Architecture, Gay Sex and Cruising Culture (2019); and projects in public space by Studio Ossidiana (2021), Swedish Girls (2022), MYCKET (2023). He has twice co-organised exhibitions for the Nordic Countries Pavilion at La Biennale di Venezia, most recently facilitating Joar Nango and collaborators’ Girjegumpi: The Sámi Architecture Library (2023) from Sápmi to Venice. His work, ideas, and creative alliances have been featured in the likes of The New York Times, PIN-UP, London Review of Books, The Economist, The Guardian, and BBC Culture.
About Para Site
Para Site, a non-profit and artist-founded contemporary art and cultural space in Hong Kong, champions original developments in contemporary art by centring artistic voices and creative innovation. Collaborating closely with practitioners and partners in the Asia-Pacific region and internationally, Para Site cultivates new work, initiatives, and ideas. Placing an emphasis on inclusiveness and original thought across its three decades, Para Site has developed a strong reputation for providing milestone opportunities to a myriad of artists and curators, many of whom go on to develop significant careers in contemporary art. Through developing benchmark exhibitions, commissioning transformative works, and cultivating new talent, Para Site foregrounds contemporary art’s capacity to reshape our understanding of society. Since its founding in 1996 by seven Hong Kong-based artists as an alternate cultural space in the city, the organisation has mounted over 300 exhibitions locally and globally, hosted over 87 international residents, and delivered over 1,000 public programmes. All of Para Site’s activites are freely accessible to the public.
The Board Members of Para Site include: Shane Akeroyd, Dr. Yeewan Koon, Alan Lau, Agnes Lew, Alan Lo, Adeline Ooi, Federico Tan, Honus Tandijono, Yuki Terase, and Sara Wong Chi Hang.
For media inquiries, please contact Erica Siu (Sutton) at erica@suttoncomms.com.
