At the end of the year, deTour, where theory and practice go hand in hand

( The original article was published on Huang Yuxuan’s IG )

"The year is coming to an end again." In recent years, when I went to PMQ to see the deTour design exhibition, I always thought about this sentence. It has almost become a ritual, and I think to myself, watching deTour will almost sum up this year.

Going on deTour has such a sense of "ritual" for me. What I remember is always walking in Soho on a sunny day in winter, encountering some ideas that inspire my creative plans for the coming year, and being happy to show my friends the results of my creations that year. In the past two years, I have cooperated and communicated with deTour more, and this feeling has become even stronger-the last public event I will do in 2022 will be to lead a walking group for this exhibition. There is such a "ceremonial sense", probably because PMQ has held deTour at the end of the year for the tenth time. This building will open its doors to the public and will celebrate its tenth anniversary.

This year I visited it on its opening day, especially because among the curatorial team and exhibitors, there are friends that I admire very much. I wanted to see the output of their hard work for a long time as soon as possible, and I also wanted to write about this year as soon as possible. The works I saw made me urge everyone to go see the exhibition. It is not easy to hold such a large-scale exhibition in Hong Kong, but the exhibition period is always short, and you will miss it if you are not careful. After this post came out and the exhibition ended, there were actually only 9 days left to go and see it (it ended on December 3).

The work I'm most looking forward to and enjoying the most is a work about Hong Kong food and traditional innovations made by my old friend Lui Jiajun, who I admire very much, and artist/chef Cam Wong. It is located in the PMQ atrium, displaying and introducing about radish, mushrooms, Native food projects in gin, fish ponds and more.

The most eye-catching installation at the entrance comes from the Dutch team Biobased Creation. It is a small house that you can walk into, showing the power of nature itself and can be regarded as various crafts. This inverted house uses every inch of space to introduce various bio-based materials, that is, various materials produced by interacting with living creatures.

What I especially like in the atrium space is the new work of "Jiezhao". They try to make modular neon lights, experimenting with an application form that may be easily assembled by ordinary people in a short time.

"Upstairs", Guo Dalin and the team behind the book "Opening the Bird Cage" not only introduced the craftsmanship of the bird cage, but also talked about the culture of raising birds. Every day, a "bird culture researcher" was on site to explain.

The "New Bean" project is based on three young designers who are studying for a master's degree in architecture, thinking about the local soy sauce factory. They built a set of prototypes and rebuilt a machine for producing soy sauce. Walking into their exhibition room, you will be filled with fragrance, and visitors can also take home a small bottle of soy sauce.

"Living Archives" is a project about the Cheung Chau Theatre. I have noticed earlier that Gu Jiacheng carefully collected community memories about the Cheung Chau Theatre, carefully presented them through the exhibition, and invited everyone to think about the possible future of this theater.

Playback Concept, the studio of metalworking artist Chen Baofeng, collected some old jewelry, listened to their touching stories about the past, and then reorganized these jewelry into brand-new jewelry, thinking about whether it is possible to 'move on'.

There are still many works in the exhibition, and I cannot introduce them one by one, but from what I have shared above, you can probably feel that the curatorial team members Kay Chan, Li Zhirong, and Stickyline are thinking about the regeneration of crafts and what the future of crafts will be. One thing, the theme is "New Know How", and the words are also cleverly used. The venue design for this year’s exhibition is led by architect Magic Kwan, and the materials and details also echo the theme of craft regeneration.

For a while, sociologist Richard Sennett's book Craftmanship attracted everyone's attention and discussion, and everyone was talking about craftsmanship for a while. I like this exhibition. It really allows us to see that many designers in Hong Kong are seriously exploring this topic, and theory and practice go hand in hand. To me, these designers who are involved in society are some of the creators in this city that I care about the most.

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