'Is art show of 4 women collectors’ works sexist or does it give much-needed visibility to women patrons?'
8 February 2021
‘Curve of Buoyancy’ at Duddell’s in Hong Kong features 16 paintings, sculptures and videos from the collections of four women
One collector says she took part because for too long art history has been swayed by the patronage of men.
The art programme at Duddell’s, a restaurant and exhibition space in Hong Kong’s Central district, often features rarely seen works on loan from private collections kept in Hong Kong homes and warehouses.
Its latest exhibition may raise eyebrows, however, not because the four collectors featured are controversial, but because they are grouped together simply by their gender.
“Curve of Buoyancy” features 16 paintings, sculptures and videos from the collections of four women: Mimi Brown, Karen Levy, Li Lin and an anonymous Hong Kong private collector identified by a question: “Would art history be rewritten if Andy Warhol were a woman?
“The selection speaks to the topsy-turvy state that our world is in. Alex Prager’s film Play the Wind (2019), for example, blends fiction and reality in a Los Angeles that resembles a film set. Alicja Kwade’s 24 Hours (2015), owned by Li, founder of Chinese fashion empire JNBY, upends the visual representation of time with its vertical column of individual clock hands.
Other artists featured include Annie Kevans, Phyllida Barlow, Guan Xiao, Zhang Enli, Melvin Edwards, Wendell Dayton, Cui Jie, Ming Wong, Wu Tsang and Boychild, and Ma Qiusha.
What is the relevance of the collectors’ gender? The exhibition title refers to the fact that women’s curves, or rather their distribution of body fat, can help them stay afloat more easily than men, explains Zoie Yung, a feng shui practitioner and guest curator of the exhibition.
There was probably a good reason why ancient cultures worshipped goddesses of voluptuous build: the woman’s body can be a symbol of resilience, she says. Therefore, it makes sense to celebrate four women’s significant support to the art world during these hard times.
That doesn’t address the problem in suggesting there are necessarily things that women collectors have in common. It has uneasy parallels with group exhibitions of women artists. Even if there is no obvious point of convergence between the four – and surely, no two people can like the same art – the grouping itself is a prompt to look for shared inclinations that are the results of biology and hormones.
Yung says she does not want to suggest there is any stereotypical behaviour among women collectors. However, there are some similarities in this seemingly diverse collection.
She points to three works on display: an untitled white ceramic sculpture by Rachel Kneebone; three bronze hemispheres by Barbara Hepworth; and a small, talismanic porcelain figure of Eve by Kiki Smith. The first two works are owned by the anonymous collector, while the third belongs to Brown.
“There is a feeling of tactile intimacy, a relationship with the daily life in all these works. This may reflect the fact that these collectors keep a lot of their art at home, rather than in storage,” she says.
Alan Lo Yeung-kit, the owner of Duddell’s, says it was his idea to have an exhibition of women collectors. “I feel it’s interesting because there are so many women among artists and art professionals, but when it comes to art collectors there seem to be very few,” he says.
Perhaps that is the main justification of such an exhibition: to give visibility to women patrons when, for too long, art history has been swayed by the patronage of men. That, at least, is why Brown, whose programmes at the non-profit art space Spring Workshop always showed a deep awareness of gender issues, took part in this exhibition.
“I find myself thinking frequently as I grow older about the premise of Elizabeth Lesser’s book Cassandra Speaks: ‘When women are the storytellers, the human story changes,’” she says by email.
“Many of us spend our lifetimes framing our worlds with narratives chosen, shaped, and preserved by masculine creators and storytellers, ancient and contemporary. These are useful as far as they go, but don’t tell the whole story, and need to be balanced by the creations and narratives of women and anyone else excluded from the first category.”
Therefore, she says, an exhibition that focuses on collectors who might not otherwise be in the spotlight is of value because it allows alternative narratives to emerge.
Curve of Buoyancy, Duddell’s, Level 3, Shanghai Tang Mansion, 1 Duddell Street, Central, Mon-Sun. Until June 20.