Virtue Village creates art that is unapologetically honest and breathtakingly raw. Joseph Chen and Cas Wong, the duo behind Virtue Village, are queer artists dismantling stereotypes surrounding the queer community while probing viewers to reconcile with stripped-back emotions of love, relationships and intimacy. “We share very similar aesthetic pursuits and areas of interest, and we are each the muse to the other”, the pair explains.
An important element of Virtue Village’s work is their unfiltered realness and their relentless search for the truth. “We are tired of portrayals of our community by mainstream society that are homonormalised, overly positive or pitiful. We just have to be honest and blunt, whether the truth is poignant or not.” This is something evident in their first major solo exhibition, “Village Porn”. “We wanted the exhibition to be explicit and diverse, from references of drug use to fetish, sex and religion. This kind of lifestyle is also part of our community, and it should not be censored”
Joseph Chen and Cas Wong
Photo: courtesy of PHD Group
How would you define a “village”? Idyllic scenes of open pastures, livestock frolicking outdoors, and a neighbourly sense of community may come to mind. But this sense of a village couldn’t be more different for this artist duo, who sought to provide a more subversive and futuristic take on what a village could be. How would time-old rituals of a village manifest in a post-human, post-internet world? Could this alternate reality offer a space of respite and authentic living for the queer community?
““Village Porn” explores the idea of “village” in different cultural contexts”, explain Joseph and Cas. The exhibition takes place at the PHD Group, the newly opened gallery spotlighting Asian artists with cultural relevance. “”Village Porn” references gay villages and cult villages as safe spaces, where marginalised people with queer identities and unorthodox beliefs that are rejected by the heteropatriarchy and mainstream society can escape to”, the pair explains. Virtue Village’s work takes the shape of sculpture, video and other mediums, while the duo are also partial to performance-based pieces, inspired by the radical language of performance art in the ‘60s and ‘70s. The pair frequently explore queer identities and counterculture, often deconstructing preconceived notions of gender ideals as a way to understand how someone queer may behave and react to specific scenarios or parallel realities.
At “Village Porn”, all judgement is left at the door. Kinky fetishes and erotic fantasies are not taboo. “They are embraced, ritualised and turned into a form of “porn” (artworks) that connect us all on a spiritual level”, Joseph and Cas explain. Some sculptures have been treated with the same chemicals found in poppers, a drug commonly used in the queer community for sexual enhancement, to highlight the transformative nature of the drug. Elsewhere, in the “garden”, sits an ornately decorated love swing, while the centrepiece installation “Machinal Dysphoria”, features an industrial-like motorcycle torso constrained by Shibari rope, a Japanese bondage tool. Created with artist Aka Chow, this piece of art intends to confront norms about flesh and erotica, leaning into AI and cyborgian co-existence.
Virtue Village frequently plays on themes of transhumanism, adding another dimensional complexity to their already incredibly layered and elaborate artworks. “Transhumanism originally means a movement in which humans can evolve and progress when bonded with science and technology”, Joseph and Cas share. “We elaborate on this by presenting increasingly blurred lines between human, machine, and nature in the posthuman narrative, where the idea of “human” is challenged and constantly in flux/transitioning, and manifests in a state of fluidity in queerness”.
This exhibition encapsulates the very ideologies of Virtue Village, who frequently investigate the broader realm of queerness while dismantling hierarchical structures and values across love, sex, and relationships. “We wanted the exhibition to be explicit and diverse, from references of drug use to fetish, sex and religion. This kind of lifestyle is also part of our community, and it should not be censored.”
The art world is in a constant state of flux, having most recently seen a rather rapid shift towards crypto art in a digitised space. But, throughout history, a reliable constant is that the vast majority of successful artists are cis, heterosexual white males. “But”, the duo shares, “what we have seen recently is that it’s gradually changing to be more inclusive to minority identities and other challenging art practices in institutions and galleries in Hong Kong”. Beyond using their voice to shatter queer stereotypes and speak their truth into the world, Virtue Village are also just happy to exist, in their own unique way. When asked to describe themselves as an artist duo in three words, their answer was straightforward. “Simple as our name: truth, kindness and beauty.”
Editor
Carina Fischer
