Hanart TZ Gallery is pleased to present the experimental Guangzhou art collective BOLOHO, and their latest project BOLOHOPE (in collaboration with “Reading Room”), as featured in Documenta fifteen, and also introduce their new body of work.

BOLOHO will transform Hanart’s gallery space into a living room and Hong Kong-style cafe (cha chaan teng 茶餐廳), with an environment built from collectively produced paintings, texts, sewing, installation, and even a series of mini-sitcoms.

In its bright and cleverly managed chaos, BOLOHOPE reflects the cultural imagination of this generation of Guangzhou youth, which is interwoven with the memory of Hong Kong media and urban culture of the 2000s—the result of an early open policy between China and Hong Kong which privileged Guangdong before the opening of the rest of China. In March 2023, BOLOHO also will present two site-specific live performances at Hanart TZ Gallery during the Art Basel Hong Kong period.

BOLOHOPE member:
BUBU 劉嘉雯
CAT 黃婉珊
FONG Waiking 馮偉敬
HE Cong 賀聰
LI Xiaotian 李筱天
LI Zhiyong 李致恿
LIU Di 劉菂
XIE Siyan 謝思堰
ZHU Jianlin 朱建林

BOLOHO

When eating jackfruit, people often throw away its core, not knowing that it can also be enjoyed as its own special delicacy. The name BOLOHO is a Cantonese romanization of the Chinese word for “jackfruit core,” which was initiated by BUBU (LIU Jiawen) and CAT (HUANG Wanshan) in 2019, with ZHU Jianlin, LI Zhiyong, and FONG Waiking joining later as full members. In the beginning, BOLOHO was more like a business venture between BUBU and CAT, two family women working away from home, and a place to get some fresh air where we could sort out our lives and work. After more than three years, the project has gradually developed into a “company” platform based on the principles of self-discipline, equality, and mutual aid, providing work for collaborators as well as friends like us who cannot make a living from art alone. BOLOHO also allows us to better understand how to live and work communally when taking jobs together and provides the opportunity to think about, discern and solve some of the real issues that we are all faced with.

Reading Room

Reading Room is an independent publishing project initiated by writers and researchers LI Xiaotian, LIU Di, and XIE Siyan, who are based in Guangzhou, Shenzhen, and Hong Kong. Founded in 2019, Reading Room aims to introduce publications and ideas to a wider community of friends in multiple languages. Setting out from an active network of art collectives and cultural commons, our main interests are in an alternative economy, social practices, family and children’s life, comics, and a variety of gender-friendly reading materials.