Past and Presence: Visual Culture and Mixed Race Identity in Hong Kong

"Race" is a discredited biological concept, but its constructed socio-historic impact informs contemporary discourse and continues to have pervasive real life effects. The mixed race body disrupts normative boundaries and draws attention to the instability of the very idea of fixed racial categories. Since the 1990s, mixed race has become an increasingly popular area of study in the social sciences, post colonial and historical studies, with a handful of scholars focusing on 19th century mixedness that references the situatedness of Hong Kong and, as mixed race demographics increase, has led to the emergent academic field of critical mixed race studies, with a small subsection researching related art practices. However, most research is centred in North America and Europe, focusing on "Western" multicultural societies. This practice-based creative research project examines the representation of mixed race identity, particularly Eurasian, in visual cultural production in Hong Kong, set within historical and contemporary social frameworks. The aims of the research are to extend the discourse relating to mixed race identities and in so doing create visual artworks that provide space to engage with the complexity of hybridity in a mixed race narrative. The first part of my research examines the colonial period in Hong Kong, out of which several strands have emerged to form the basis of of exploratory artworks and which I focus on here: embodiment, dress, fictive accounts, and the contemporary replication of certain 19th century attitudes which unintentionally re-inscribe stereotypical notions of fixed racial characteristics.