Chow Chun-fai has chosen veteran journalist-turned-gallery owner Sharon Cheung as his muse for his latest series of paintings to be displayed at Art Basel Hong Kong
Published: 6:15pm, 26 Mar 2025
Artist Chow Chun-fai first became aware of journalist Sharon Cheung Po-wah from her 2000 interaction with the then Chinese president Jiang Zemin. During a press conference in Beijing, when Cheung quizzed Jiang over the endorsement of Hong Kong chief executive Tung Chee-hwa for a second term, the Chinese leader famously berated her, calling her questioning, as a journalist, “too simple, sometimes naive”. It is a moment that has since achieved meme status with the Hong Kong public, both in journalism circles and beyond.
“It’s not just how Cheung was bold enough to ask the question, but also that the leaders revealed their true emotions,” says Chow. “I don’t know if that was my first encounter with her, but it definitely was the most memorable.”
Over the past two decades, Chow, 45, has built a reputation as a quintessentially Hong Kong artist. A graduate of Chinese University’s Department of Fine Arts, he is best known for his ongoing series “Painting on Movies”, depicting scenes from films that often uncannily reflect public sentiment. One of his most recognised works, from 2007, features a still from Infernal Affairs (2002), with Tony Leung Chiu-wai’s character stating, “I want my identity back” – an allusion to the then nascent struggles of Hongkongers’ relationship with their hometown.
Chow has also drawn on his experience as a taxi driver, having inherited his father’s taxi licence when he was still in school. In recent years, he’s been taking inspiration from the political upheaval of 2019 for his series “Portraits from Behind”, and has depicted lost street corners and cultural landmarks in his “Map of Amnesia” exhibition.
Cheung, formerly of the South China Morning Post and Cable TV, left her trade during the pandemic and studied for an arts degree, initially seeing it as a way to indulge her interest in drawing. But when artist and educator Kurt Chan Yuk-keung complimented her on her curatorial skills, she parlayed her passion into promoting local artists who could benefit from her background in marketing and journalism. In 2022, she founded SC Gallery, in Wong Chuk Hang, and has since put on a slew of group and solo exhibitions, working with artists such as Gum Cheng Yee-man, Oscar Chan Yik-long and Cheng Ting Ting.
For “Interview the Interviewer II”, a series of paintings that will be on display at Art Basel Hong Kong’s Insights sector, Chow assumes the role of the interviewer, drawing from materials accumulated by Cheung during her time as a political reporter, to interpret and re-present recent Hong Kong history through the lens of someone on the front lines of important moments in the city.
Among the works is a still from news footage that shows a 1999 meeting between former United States president Bill Clinton and former Chinese premier Zhu Rongji, subtitled I love American people, thank you. Given where Sino-US relations stand today, it recalls a simpler geopolitical era, one near-unimaginable today.
Chow’s interest in Cheung’s archive lies in not just the content, but the presentation. Her materials provide a behind-the-scenes look at events the public has become aware of through news reels and articles. So much of our recollection of certain historical moments, Chow says, is depicted in analogue modes such as film, which visually dictates the textures and colours of our memories. In the generation before us, perhaps those episodes were shown in the black-and-white images that were available at the time.
“As someone who paints, these are the things I think about,” he says. “And when I’m making this series of works, I deliberately consider these elements of memory, history and aesthetics that mark a particular era in my art.”
Searching through photographs taken throughout Cheung’s career, something that caught Chow’s eye was the way that the journalist’s many press passes contained variations of her name in Cantonese and Mandarin transliterations.
“A lot of this material, in the world of journalism, expires within a week,” he says, “but in my interviews with her, they instead become nutrients of art.”
The thread that ties these paintings together, through journalist and artist, is the need to find and tell a story, whether seeking to resonate with the reader of a news article or the viewer of a piece of art. But there is also the challenge of staging the show at an international art fair versus a gallery.
“When we did the first iteration at SC Gallery [in 2023], no matter how uninterested the viewers were, they’d at least spend maybe 10 or so minutes to look at the story we’re trying to convey with the exhibition,” says Chow. “This show is at Art Basel Hong Kong, which means everyone will have even shorter attention spans. You’ll only get seconds with each booth, and if I’m drawn to what’s happening I may come back for more.
“I think this is similar to how reporting works: you need to be loud and clear, to let people know immediately what it is that they should be paying attention to.”
The unlikely match of painter and journalist also saw them question what it means to be a Hong Kong artist.
“When I was at [film production company] Media Asia, I worked with many directors, one of whom was Johnnie To,” says Cheung. “He often said that when you’re making art and telling a story, you need to start with what’s most familiar to you, so when I started working with Hong Kong artists, whether younger ones or more seasoned artists like Chow, I realised what was great about them, aside from technique, is that they have the background of growing up between Chinese and Western cultures.”
Chow had to come to terms with his own identity as a Hong Kong artist.
“I had my own rebellious times, not that I’m not rebellious now,” he says, “but when people started labelling me, I rejected those labels.”
However, he soon realised there was no escape from a certain Hong Kong-ness in his works. If he painted what he ate that day, it would be instant noodles, if he drew nature, it would be the bauhinia or cotton tree.
“I’d have to deliberately avoid these Hong Kong images, but then I thought, ‘If it takes so much effort to do that, then why avoid it in the first place?’,” he says. “You can paint milk tea or egg tarts, but if you’re presenting them as if for the Tourism Board, then, of course, that wouldn’t be good art.”
“It’s not good art when it’s too obvious, too direct,” says Cheung. “But in news, you need to be direct, the more direct and concise the better.”
Chow’s works, then, become a way for the pair to seek out the appropriate level of artistic distance to material that appears at first glance so straightforward and overt.
“I think that’s an interesting convergence between the two modes of representation,” says Cheung.
And even being in Hong Kong during more politically and artistically sensitive times, Chow remains optimistic.
“To be able to learn a new language when I’m already at a mid-career stage – that is a surprise … many great artists are able to speak the language of the era they’re in,” he says. “It’s more than just a painting – it’s a way for artists to survive.
“I’m very conscious of the way I’m continuing to learn how to express myself. We all know now that we’re living in unprecedented times, and in the past many artists have craved to live within such circumstances. Of course, there’s a kind of pressure in the reality we live in, but if we continue to be in this space, I’ll keep making art.”
“Interview the Interviewer II”, Art Basel Hong Kong, Hong Kong Convention Exhibition Centre, 1 Harbour Road, Wan Chai, from March 26 to 30