Trevor Yeung on Bringing Hong Kong to Venice

Wong Binghao Let’s start with your presentation at the Hong Kong Collateral Event at this year’s Venice Biennale. The exhibition, titled ‘Trevor Yeung: Courtyard of Attachments, Hong Kong in Venice’, will centre on the human relationship with aquatic ecosystems and I was curious why you decided to focus on this when many of your other works deal with plant life and horticulture?

Trevor Yeung It’s funny, my fascination with aquatic life actually predates my interest in horticulture. I had my first aquarium when I was in high school. I ended up with a crazy number of fish tanks – seven in total – in a small bedroom that I shared with my sister. And I think, as a teenager, my interests in plants and pet fish were always a form of distraction for me, to get away from reality. It was more like an outlet. So, by the time I was in university and started making art, I explored this idea of using plants as a medium.

But at the same time, throughout my practice I have worked extensively with aquariums from as early as 2011. Live in Hong Kong, Born in Dongguan [2015] is an early work in which I placed fish species foreign to Hong Kong into six different tanks to reflect on my own sense of belonging. Working with aquariums depends on the exhibition venue and location, because if I am in a city like in Hong Kong, where I’m from, it’ll be easier for me to procure and manage aquariums. If I have to travel somewhere that I’m not immediately familiar with – I don’t know the aquarium shops, for instance, or I don’t know anyone reliable to take care of the fish tank – I tend to not make those works.

There will be no fish in the aquariums in my Venice presentation. The empty tanks in Pond of Never Enough [2024], in the courtyard of the exhibition venue, resemble those in Chinese seafood restaurants. A filtration system in the work purifies water from the Grand Canal and channels it back into the lagoon. In Venice, where so many exhibitions are on view at the same time, each show is like an individual fish tank. Apart from directly addressing aquatic ecosystems, I see the fish tanks in my works as metaphors for these social systems.

WB In the lead-up to Venice, you’ve been very busy. In addition to the Biennale, you are also showing in this year’s Sydney Biennial, and just recently opened a solo show at Para Site in Hong Kong, in addition to having presentations at Gasworks, London and M+, Hong Kong in the past year. How have all these shows prepared you for your Venice project? 

TY To represent Hong Kong in the Venice Biennale means a lot to me. As an artist from Hong Kong, this is something that I have been thinking about since I started making art. So, in many ways, the Venice project is something that has been percolating in my mind for quite some time. And one thing about my practice is that it’s almost always informed by and relies on the different locations that I find myself making the work. For instance, the project that was commissioned for Gasworks – which is now up at Para Site [Soapy Fuck Tree, 2023] – was inspired by Hampstead Heath, a park in London famous for cruising. The same is true for the Sydney Biennial. I did a research trip to Sydney last year, looking at the different flora and fauna in the city and comparing it to my hometown of Hong Kong. To be in Australia and find these kinds of connections between both places, this is something that I particularly find interesting.

And back to Venice, I think it’s very different from Hong Kong but, at the same time, both cities look to the sea. Last year, I did a residency project at Blank Canvas in Penang, Malaysia, another island city that also looks to the sea. During my time in Penang, I visited a pet shop with many fish tanks arranged in a specific configuration, which reminded me of the old aquarium shops in Hong Kong that sell goldfish in particular. I was amazed that the habits of fish hobbyists were so similar in both cities. I modelled my work in Venice after this aquarium structure. I was intrigued to find out that there is a large Chinese community in Penang, too, and I made a series of works that reflected on this idea of a shared community between both cities.

WB A lot of your artworks either prompt or control audience interaction. In your work, The Queue [2023] at M+ for the exhibition ‘Sigg Prize 2023’ – of which you were a finalist – if viewers joined a queue, they would be led to a private room displaying two of your artworks: Mr Cuddles in a Hotel Room [2023] and Wall of a Hamster Cage (Mira Moon) [2022]. Viewers who did not queue up could just walk right by the room and be unable to see your other work. What about controlling audience interactions interests you?

TY It’s a bit complicated in a way. It is about control but, at the same time, it’s about taking charge of a situation or understanding how the system works. For instance, with an aquarium, if you don’t have full control over it, you jeopardize the health and life of the fish inside. I can’t say that the fish are happy because we cannot really interpret their feelings but, in a way, you assume that they are in good hands. This is a form of control but with care.

I use this same ideological approach to my artmaking, in the way that I arrange fabrics and plants to intentionally obscure photographs in my ‘Enigma’ series [2015]. In Garden Sitter [2015], I placed a large potted plant in front of a photograph of a person who is lying on their side, back toward the viewer. As artists, we have a lot of control over how our work is seen and experienced but I think anyone going to see an exhibition also has the power to experience art on their own terms. Somehow, there is this strange power dynamic between the work, the audience and the artist, in terms of controlling how we all view and experience art. So, when I try to disrupt how people view my work, it’s really a way to connect with the audience, a small gesture to encourage them to see as opposed to look – to actively move their body and to put more effort into seeing.

WB Is this a strategy you intend to use in your Venice show?

TY There’s one work that perhaps addresses this idea more pointedly. It’s the biggest installation piece in the exhibition: Cave of Avoidance (Not Yours) [2024]. It’s basically a large fish tank with a one-way mirror inside it so you can’t stop looking at yourself while staring at the artwork. So, you are being invited to be part of the artwork in a way. It’s also an invitation to feel self-conscious, uncomfortable, to put yourself in the very enclosed structure of an aquarium, losing yourself in there, all alone. There are no fish in the aquarium, so you just constantly see yourself, and others surrounding you, looking at the empty fish tank with you inside it.

This is also a way of forcing the audience to feel a connection with the artwork, to not feel so removed from it. But at the same time, when you are inside the artwork, other people are looking at you also, so this becomes something like a frenetic experience. I love to observe people, particularly people looking at artworks. For me, the audience is also part of the experience of the installation, so when you see the work, you are actually being seen as well. So that shift of position becomes something that I’m quite interested in and this is one of the works that really focuses on that.

WB Can you describe how the work will also touch on the relationships between humans and non-humans alike. How has this interrelationship with plant life or animal life changed your own perspective on interpersonal connections or intimacy?

TY I think we all are conditioned to be human-centred, where everything revolves around the human experience. Even with regards to my work – I’m using plants, horticulture and aquariums to talk about the human condition. But, at the same time, the work is also not just about humans but, in a way, how we extend the connection, the kinds of empathy to non-humans. One good example is when I used to go to Goldfish Street in Hong Kong when I was a kid, they would package their fish in a plastic bag and hang it outside their store, so you could buy it directly and go back home and put it in your aquarium. But now, people protest saying that the fish is so sad inside the plastic bag, that they are suffering. This is a change of empathy, how we project ourselves onto the fish. Visitors can only look at themselves or project themselves into the empty fish tanks in my Venice presentation. With all of my work, and this project in particular, I hope to change the intimacy and relationship between caregiver (human) and receiver (non-human).

'Trevor Yeung: Courtyard in Venice, Hong Kong in Venice' at Campo della Tana, Castello 2126 in Venice, Italy, opens 20 April and will be on view until 24 November. The exhibition is co-organized by M+ West Kowloon Cultural District Authority and the Hong Kong Arts Development Council, as part the Collateral Events for the 60th Venice Biennale

_{Main image: Trevor Yeung, Cave of Avoidance (Not Yours) (detail), 2024, fish tanks, aquarium equipment, ceramics, plastic containers, lamps, metal racks, fish waste, and water, dimensions variable. Courtesy: © Trevor Yeung and M+, Hong Kong; photograph: © South Ho}