💡 06. Introducing Kongkee (Kong Khong-chang)
Kong Khong-chang, better known as Kongkee, is a Chinese animator and visual artist based in London and Hong Kong. He explores the urban landscape of Hong Kong through fantastical, futuristic, yet authentic lenses.
Kongkee (Kong Khong-chang)
Kong Khong-chang, better known as Kongkee, is a Chinese animator and visual artist based in London and Hong Kong. He explores the urban landscape of Hong Kong through fantastical, futuristic, yet authentic lenses. His artworks are often characterized by vivid colors, neon lighting, and cyberpunk aesthetics, as well as references to East Asian pop culture and Chinese cultural heritage.
Associated Terms: Cyberpunk
Contacts: Find Kongkee on the Penguin Lab website and on his Instagram :)
Project Spotlight: Warring States Cyberpunk
Warring States Cyberpunk has been featured at numerous renowned galleries, including Wrightwood 659 in Chicago and the Asian Art Museum in San Francisco. It follows the imagined journey of Chinese poet Qu Yuan, whose soul travels from the ancient Kingdom of Chu to a hypothetical 21st century Asia, populated not only by cyborgs, electronics, and music, but also by emotion and nostalgia. The exhibition features a variety of mediums, from video installations, to neon displays, to graphic illustrations, to narrative panels, and even to ancient Chinese artifacts.
Thoughts: Personal Reflections and Connections
I really love the comic-inspired cyberpunk aesthetics of Kongkee’s artworks. Having grown up in a bustling Chinese city myself, the neon yet vintage color palette, combined with the sleepless Hong Kong cityscapes, really stir up a sense of nostalgia in me.
I also find Kongkee’s reimagination of Qu Yuan to be fun yet insightful. In his conversations with Wrightwood 659, Kongkee notes the “psychedelic, wandering” quality of Qu Yuan’s work, discussing how he wanted to to repurpose that spirit to reflect the “disorientation” of modernity. He also explores how the political turmoil and artistic flourshing of the Warring States period continues today, reimagining traditional storytelling through digital mediums.
Those words really stuck out to me, because I am actually currently taking a course on the History of Chinese Art, and I feel very in-touch with the artistic/cultural references that Kongkee is making. For instance, Kongkee often utilizes Chinese bronzes and the “taotie” motif in his artworks, which we had examined in class, but within historical contexts. It is really fascinating to see that cultural heritage revived in futurist contexts, creating much needed dialogue across time.
Resources and Further Readings 📖
This entry is just a simple introduction to Kongkee and his body of work. If you are interested in exploring his process, practice, and philosophy in greater depth, I have gathered below a little index of resources that I found very informative. I have also starred sources that were exceptionally in-depth and enlightening.
- More about Kongkee:
- More about Warring States Cyberpunk:
- Asian Art Museum - Kongkee: Warring States Cyberpunk
- Wrightwood 659 - Kongkee: Warring States Cyberpunk
- ⭐ Interviews on the exhibition
Short video and photographs highlighting features from Kongkee’s Warring States Cyberpunk exhibition at Wrightwood 659, as posted by Kongkee on Instagram ⬇️