Pavilion Mock up
The “57th Venice Art Biennale” will be held from 13 May to 26 November 2017 in Venice, Italy. The Macao Museum of Art (MAM) under the Cultural Affairs Bureau will continue to promote, for the sixth time, the participation of Macao artists at this prestigious international art event. The organizer held an information session on 5 December, at 12pm, at the MAM Auditorium, in order to announce the chosen artists to the press in representation of Macao in this year’s edition as well as to reveal the exhibition plan of the Macao Pavilion. Just like in previous editions, MAM invited an iconic artist active in the local art circles, with outstanding achievements in both creation and in facilitating the development of art, to show his representative work at the Macao Pavilion in the Biennale. For this purpose, MAM invited the Director of the School of Arts of the Macao Polytechnic Institute, Hsu Hsiu-Chu and the veteran Macao artist Wong Ho Sang, in collaboration with the director and art consultant of MAM, Chan Hou Seng and António Conceição Júnior; and the curator of MAM, Ng Fong Chao, to establish a jury with five members in charge of selecting a representative artist from nearly 40 local candidates. Macao renowned artist Wong Cheng Pou was unanimously selected as Macao’s representative at the Biennale, where he will showcase his works along with outstanding international artists. Born in 1960 in Macao, Wong Cheng Pou was awarded the 2010 Sovereign Asian Art Prize and was recognised as one of the top 30 Asian artists. He was involved in the development of modern art education in Macao and has been dedicated to education in printmaking since the 1990. Wong Cheng Pou was invited as Honorary Research Assistant of the Slade School of Fine Art at the University College London, and is currently President of the Printmaking Research Centre of Macau and Chief Curator of the Macau Printmaking Triennial. In the past, he was the Chief of the Division of Arts Research and Museology of Leal Senado and the Head of the Printmaking Department of the Academy of Visual Arts (known as the School of Arts of the Macao Polytechnic Institute now) and Coordinator of the Ethnography Exhibition in Luis de Camões Museum. His works have been showcased in Macao, Mainland China, Japan and the United Kingdom, among others, and are part of collections of several institutions around the world. In this edition’s Macao Pavilion, Wong Cheng Pou will create an ambience where time and space are interwoven by using three-dimensional modelling, installations, paintings and mobile images, to express his personal experience about Macao’s rapid development in recent years, and provoke memories of going back to the countryside. Started in 1895, the Venice Art Biennale is one of the most important contemporary art events, each edition attracting hundreds of thousands of visitors from around the globe in a pilgrimage-like event. Macao was first invited to participate in the Biennale in 2007, being allowed to show its creations on a prestigious international stage. This year marks the sixth exhibition organized by MAM for the 15th Macao artist. The Macao Pavilion attracted over 60,000 visitors in last edition .
