The Venice Biennale, a world-renowned visual arts exhibition, attracts artists from all over the world to showcase their talent. It is every artist's dream to participate in the international spectacle, whether taking the stage as a representative of a country or an art organisation.

This June, an assemblage of Hong Kong artists journeyed to Venice to meet with art ambassadors from over a hundred nations and areas for a cross-cultural repartee on a truly global scale.

Star Fairy, Hong Kong's entry, is the collective brainchild of local artists Amy Cheung, Map Office and Hiram To initiated by arts veteran Norman Ford. The exhibition is designed to invite viewers to contemplate how the city of Hong Kong projects itself globally.

Operating like a ferris wheel, Cheung's exhibit Devil's Advocate is essentially a gigantic freezer where ice sculptures of human figures are preserved. The creative duo, Mr Laurent Gutierrez and Ms Valérie Portefaix of Map Office, carpet a replica of Hong Kong Island with oyster shells and populate the mist-filled isle with mechanical parrots in a project forthrightly entitled Concrete Jungle / The Parrot's Tale. To's installation, I Love You More Than My Own Death, explores our fascination with the three spectacles of power, greed and self-interest.

How far did Star Fairy succeed in boggling the mind to contemplate?

Allegorical, From Inside and Out

When the curtain lifted on the Venice Biennale on 8 June, all eyes were fixed on the Map Office exhibit at the courtyard. The "concrete jungle" in question is paved with oyster shells, damp and overcast with misty air. Its inhabitants are a small flock of mechanical parrots, which upon approaching, take viewers aback with their sharp-tongued, pentalingual gift. Shaped after the Hong Kong island, the oyster shells that tile the entire body of work were shipped all the way from their harvesting farm in Lau Fau Shan to Venice. Oyster is used as a powerful and pervasive medium to present the territory. Coming from an oyster farm in the north of Hong Kong, these bivalves thrive and multiply by the million, sculpting a unique landscape that is tied in with the changing climate and retroceding border crossings to the Mainland.

To commemorate the 10th anniversary of Hong Kong's reunification with China, an integral part of their work, a one-metre square monument Personal Island—a piece of space and personal gift — will be moved to the China pavilion at some point during the Biennale preview period, re-staging in epitome the momentous reunion a decade ago in a foreign land.

Strolling away from the sun-drenched courtyard into the interior, all attention will be riveted by a sense of eerie darkness. The centerpiece is a giant freezer. The mechanism running inside is a slow rotating ferris wheel taking on board the least likely passengers — ice statues of elderly people. Once inside the freezer, the icy coldness is almost overwhelming, immersing the viewers in solitude far removed from the hustle and bustle outside. A dark parody of the carnivalesque atmosphere of a theme park, Ms Cheung's work delivers a scathing criticism of the cityscape, collective memory and star culture embraced by the society. Taking the place of wide-eyed riders are crudely fashioned ice figurines of elderly people, which presage the global aging crisis and lends the issue an immediacy. From construction, transportation to its final dissolution by means of melting, the life of these ice sculptures has come full circle, mirroring the life cycle of a city which is forever undergoing construction and destruction, back and forth.

Displayed on the wing of the pavilion is To's three-construct installation where the unifying theme of "duplicity" is brought to the fore, amid a canopy of images that conjure up an ambiguous site that jumble between hope and despair, lies and truth. The installation is endowed with spatial polarity. A lucid, bright image of a fruit would transform into historical iconography with the change of perspective. The dissipation and re-emergence of the vibrant hues work to dredge into a well of hidden profundity to be discovered.

Acclaimed and Popular

Dr Patrick Ho, Secretary for Home Affairs and Mr Ma Fung-kwok, Chairman of the Hong Kong Arts Development Council (ACD) led the Hong Kong delegation at the official opening in Venice.

Impressed by the high standard this year, Mr Ma expected Hong Kong arts to continue to shine at international events like the Biennale, and at the same time, reinforce the ties forged between local artists and their overseas counterparts by engaging Hong Kong in an exchange of ideas with the international art scene.

Dr Ho praised the global dimension in the Hong Kong entry. Curator Norman Ford is an American transplant who has long made Hong Kong his home; Ms Cheung and Mr To were born and raised in Hong Kong; at the helm of Map Office are two Hong Kong-based French architects. The work is an embodiment of Hong Kong as multi-culturally cosmopolitan which offers an inviting environment for artists to unleash their constructive energies, regardless of nationality and background.

The Hong Kong pavilion opened to the Venetian crowd in the presence of guests Mr Zhang Jian-da (Cultural Attache of People's Republic of China in Italy), Mr Duncan Pescod (Special Representative for Hong Kong, Economic and Trade Affairs to the European Communities), Mr Kwok Kian-chow (Director of the Singapore Art Museum), Mr Edmund Cheng (Chairman of the National Arts Council, Singapore), Mr Lee Suan-hiang (its CEO) Mr Ung Vai-meng (Director of the Macau Museum of Art), Mr Ng Fong-chao (Curator of the Macau Pavilion), Mr Chu Cheok-son(Assistant Curator), Mr Lui Chak-keong (artist of the Macau Pavilion), and arts practitioners from Hong Kong, Mr Leung Chi-wo, Ms Sara Wong, Mr Tobias Berger, Ms Catherine Lau, Ms Lesley Lau (Chief Curator of Heritage Museum Services, Leisure and Cultural Services Department), Ms Eve Tam (Curator (Modern Art) of Hong Kong Museum of Art) and ADC's Chief Executive Mr Louis Yu.

Nearly 200 guests including artists, arts critics, curator and media from different countries such as China, the United States, Canada, Japan, Ukraine, Switzerland, the United Kingdom and Germany attended the opening ceremony.

Asian Arts at Venice

A strong Asian presence permeates the Biennale, as regulars the Mainland, Taiwan and Hong Kong are joined by Macau for the first time to showcase the very best of Chinese arts to the world, while Japan, Korea and Singapore complete the summation.

Hong Kong played host at a gala dinner on 8 June attended by arts administrators, curators and artists from the different countries and a host of international art practitioners in an evening of lively conversation and experience-sharing.