Kongkee’s River is entering the exhibition Myths and Monsters: The Art of Fantasy in Asia at the M+ museum in Hong Kong. Starting Oct. 17, M+, the museum of visual culture in Hong Kong, will open Myths and Monsters: The Art of Fantasy in Asia in its West Gallery, placing local contemporary animator Kongkee’s drowned metropolis alongside a sprawling historical lineage of regional fantasy.
How Kongkee Floods the Borrowed Place
Kongkee’s inclusion in the M+ exhibition centers on a striking singular image from his work River. A yellow figure sits half-submerged in blood-orange water, holding a small black book bearing the title Borrowed Place, Borrowed Time. Floating around this solitary reader are the iconic shop signs and ferry vessels of the Hong Kong of the artist’s youth. Those exact words borrow from Richard Hughes’s book on the city, long used as shorthand for a territory operating on borrowed hours. The artist takes that worn cliché quite literally and floods the entire frame.
That visual now anchors a much larger curatorial conversation. M+ has structured Myths and Monsters across four distinct chapters. The journey moves from ukiyo-e woodblock prints, Indonesian shadow puppetry, and Tibetan Buddhist scrolls through the arrival of Surrealism in Asia and the post-war boom of manga and anime. The final chapter lands squarely on the contemporary anime aesthetic bleeding into global art, fashion, design, video games, and digital culture.
The museum’s expansive roster spans from Astro Boy creator Osamu Tezuka to Singaporean artist Ho Tzu Nyen. Placing Kongkee’s clean, cel-shaded flat lines into this specific genealogy highlights how his apocalyptic visions rely directly on the grammar of the classic comics that shaped him. The exhibition runs through April 4, 2027.
Global Exhibitions Map Regional Power and Migration
The exhibition’s arrival coincides with a broader international circuit of contemporary art showcases highlighted in Galerie du Monde’s October roundup. In Taipei, Galerie du Monde hosts American artist Adia Millett for Power Unearthed, running through Nov. 7. The exhibition features paintings, textiles, and installations exploring how power moves across land, bodies, and spirits, elevating women, Black communities, and marginalized voices.
Millett’s canvases construct a lattice of hot pink, saffron, emerald, and black triangles using a compositional logic akin to quilting. A step backward reveals a pale circle pressing up from beneath the grid—a buried narrative forcing its way to the surface. Meanwhile, at Asia Society Hong Kong, the late local painter Wesley Tongson pushes ink and brush beyond traditional limits by using his own body as the primary tool in Singing and Dancing with Brush and Ink, which closes Oct. 11.
At London’s Hayward Gallery, Taiwanese artist Musquiqui Chihying presents A Life of Navigation through Oct. 18. Video stills from the project depict a young person sprinting desperately along a supermarket checkout conveyor belt as a cashier looks up, turning everyday grocery shopping into an obstacle course. Further afield, Hong Kong video artist Alison Nguyen exhibits Perforation, Ellipse at the Busan Biennale through Nov. 1, while Lam Tung Pang brings Out of This World to the Richmond Art Gallery near Vancouver starting Oct. 24.
Additional international touchpoints include Liu Sheng’s I’ll Catch You Later at the Guangdong Times Museum in Guangzhou through Jan. 31, 2027, and the late Thai modernist Tang Chang’s Giving Life at Dib Bangkok through May 3, 2027. Locally in Hong Kong, Chiu Wei-Hsiang’s Toil and Soil continues its run at Galerie du Monde through the end of October.
