Para Site is pleased to present ‘Reframing Strangeness: Ha Bik Chuen’s Motherboards and Collagraphs’ (opening on 9 May 2025; on view until 10 August 2025), an exhibition that refocuses on Ha’s printmaking practice on the occasion of Ha’s 100th birth anniversary.
‘Motherboard’ is the term Hong Kong-based artist Ha Bik Chuen (1925–2009) coined for his collagraph plates. They are assembled from wood and other found material through a highly labour-intensive process. Throughout his life, Ha created over 100 motherboards and kept them away from public view. He used these motherboards to produce over 3,000 editioned collagraphs mostly in the 1970s and 1980s.
‘Reframing Strangeness’ stages a selection of Ha’s motherboards, collagraphs and gouache drawings. In the exhibition, the motherboards are placed next to their ‘offspring’ collagraphs and ‘parallel’ drawings to offer a re-reading of Ha’s interconnected art practice. It encourages viewers to examine Ha's motherboards as aesthetic objects. It invites them to contemplate the artist's distinctive relationship to materials circulating in the region then, which was a key part of Ha’s art-making process.
Gallery address: 22/F, Wing Wah Ind. Building, 677 King’s Road, Quarry Bay