5th November 2026 – 21st February 2027
After 10 long months of meticulous probing and painstaking scrutiny of the bowels of the HKSAR art funding shenanigans, 3rd Wave presents you with HEArtifact, a graduation group show by a specially commissioned research committee who took upon their shoulders the colossal undertaking of fact-checking the Hong Kong art world: an exposition featuring verified facts with quantitative data analysis, dark web scuba diving, declassified document references, and eyewitness testimony that some visitors may find deeply disturbing. Together with CIPStephen, SIPSuli, PIMaillori, DIFurqan and COIFeaston, this exhibition brings together cross-referenced financial records, empirical evidence distilled from strata of statistical claims with official government disclosures, Freedom of Information Act releases, and many hush-hush whistleblower accounts. However, certain funding programmes referenced operate under classifications beyond public scrutiny, and specific capabilities described remain inevitably and officially denied by the agencies in question. Our collaborators and participants have chosen to present the resulting materials without the sanitizing filter of institutional caution. Viewer discretion is advised - not for factual-graphical content, but for the psychological impact of recognizing one’s own position within the engineered labyrinth described. What you see on display could well be nothing short of a genuine conspiracy.
Seldom does a study's conflict of interest itself have a conflict of interest, and in such magnitude, coincidentally coinciding with even more coincidences, so this time the toothpaste is fully out of the tube. 3rd Wave invites you to simply follow the breadcrumbs to uncover an epic story of cui bono, see for yourself the kingpin and the diddlers who wantonly squander mega-truck loads of public funding right under your very nose, year after year. HEArtifact tells a story that not only do we have an ongoing egregious abuse of trust by a cult with vested interests, but possibly a military-grade gerrymandering of taxpayers’ money being misappropriated across the entire spectrum of cultural and creative industries, into what Adorno and Horkheimer would have termed the culture industry, orchestrated to ensure that only certain kinds of art are encouraged, whereas challenging ideas, alternative educational programmes, diverse expressions, independent spirits are but prime targets for budget cuts, receiving instead censorship and ideological restrictions.
HEArtifact did it so you don’t have to: there’s no need to be a statistician, econometrician or data scientist – now’s your chance to see through the sea of invoices and figures in their unadulterated and glorious grandiosity. The purpose of this fact-checking programme is to lay out a desperate hope for all to recognise the symptoms and signs, in order to reset and leverage this unhinged public resource spending programme – to better distribute art funding, to provide adequate support to nurture local artists so that true creativity can flourish, thus improving quality of life for all Hong Kong citizens, bringing home stellar-quality programmes and events that can help increase critical awareness of arts that inspire, and ultimately facilitate opportunities to set the stage for meaningful collaboration on an international level.
