The World of 2084
2015 - ongoing
Lifelong project
"The World of 2084" is artist Michelle Fung's lifelong interdisciplinary art project. There are five imaginary countries in this world, and each country's mirco-narrative is comprised of diverse works such as animation, woodcut, drawing, painting, installation and performance. Each country takes approximately ten years.
(G5 delegate: Comrade Pig)
2015 – ongoing
In 2084, the imaginary country Contradictoria has solved its pollution problem with Plan Polluta. Under this plan, air pollution is condensed into building bricks, which are used to build arcologies called Polluta, floating green vibrant live/work colonies for artists! Artists can live, work and show for free, forever! It sounds too good to be true. It is.
(G5 delegate: Sedna)
2022 - ongoing
Populated with giant puffins, a mountain-size ice-cream maker and ruled by the Ice Queen (a polar bear ice sculpture) and her walrus magicians, Northlandia is a surreal arctic tale of the precarious balance between human greed and the magical landscape, between the north and the rest of the world and between self-preservation and the rapidly changing climate.
Polluta Floating Artist Colony in the Sky. Catalogue. 2018. P.64-65.
The Republic of Strata
(G5 delegate: Mama Jumbo)
Future Project
Mama Jumbo is from the unspeakable class. According to the strict social and religious hierarchy, she is unable to rise to any political position. In the 2060s, the country sees a major civil rights movement, in which her mother is the martyred leader. Since then, the suppressed “unspeakable” women have finally gotten a taste of social mobility.
She is at the G5 meeting to find out about her missing niece.
The Aristocratic Union
Future Project
(G5 delegate: the Duke of Griffin)
The Duke of Griffin has an old name (but no cash) and many expensive castles to upkeep. His solution? Marrying rich daughters from developing countries! However, every few years, the wives mysteriously disappear. His latest wife is the niece of Mama Jumbo, the delegate of the Republic of Strata.
Dreamland (G5 delegate: Generalissimo Eagle)
Future Project
Generalissimo Eagle almost couldn’t make it to the meeting because of an internal crisis. All of the states west of the Ridge have petitioned to join Northlandia for the promise of water. In the end, he decides to come to the meeting in hope of entering private negotiations with his big sister.
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"Michelle is devoted to her art practice and the visionary world of 2048 she has created. It is an epic thought-provoking tale that reflects the dreams and despair of the world we live in. She ingeniously combines contemporary issues with various traditional artmaking techniques in her works.
Michelle’s art world not only shows empathy and imagination for viewers, but it is also insightful for those who have been involved in the making process."
Hilda Chan & Iven Cheung
Curators of MUSTHAVEKEYS
"Michelle’s dystopian worlds are vivid portraits of our current one. This core dimension runs throughout her work, from “Plastic, Plastic, Everywhere” to the Polluta series. Art can either depict and illuminate our known world or create a world of its own—though one that always contains some sort of grasp of our reality. Michelle amazingly blends these two facets of art in her work. Her filigree drawings deserve our close look and attention. Her representations need a qualitative temporality through which, little by little, we discover the many layers of depth embedded in them. This active contemplation is a very rewarding process of world- and meaning-making for the audience, and I am grateful to Michelle for creating these experiences for us."
Estela Ibáñez García.
“I have known Michelle ever since she had an exhibition of photographs at the Hong Kong Fringe Club in 2006. Young and enthusiastic, full of ideas and a willingness to express her ambitions. Now a mature artist, she is still full of ideas and has the ability to convey them articulately in both English and Chinese. It has been a real pleasure to see her progress to becoming a major artistic voice.
Her current enterprises like woodblock prints and her mystical “Polluta, Floating Artist Colony in the Sky” require that rare combination of both heart and mind. I know nobody more dedicated to their art than Michelle. The great precision needed to cut woodblocks has to have both intellectual understanding and a real feel for the medium. In that respect, she is a superb draughtsman, never anything out of line.
As a maturing artist, she has spent much of her time understanding the environmental problems we all face. Here she is a great educator and reaches out through both visual and performance art to a very wide audience going far beyond Hong Kong.
Being an artist is a 24-hour occupation but Michelle has the stamina to sustain her ambition as her complex techniques demand much time and energy. Always nice to talk with her as her love of the cinema, music, literature do inform her work. Her natural fluency in English makes communication with her an effortless pleasure, and always a nice touch of humour that is so necessary.
Now with short films on the agenda and with the rapid progress of her projects, I look forward to these developments and the nice surprises I can expect.”
Norman de Brackinghe, Artist and Photographer