A box of possibilities

Thirty-nine artists transform plain boxes into more than 60 unique works, exploring different perspectives. The Headbox exhibition highlights how a simple form can take on new meanings through individual creativity, showing that while people may share the same starting point, their expressions can be very different.

From blank boxes to bold expressions

An artist’s expression lies on the medium they are given, and for the currently held “Headbox (Art and/or Mask) Exhibition”, 39 local artists were given the chance to express themselves on a plain box. There was no exact concept for what the Headbox should become, and for the exhibition’s curator, sculptor artist Hung Chang Wong, the absence of restrictions was important.

Hung poses alongside one of his many artworks at the exhibition.

Artist Eugene Chin stands beside his headbox artwork.

Rather than directing the artists towards a particular concept, he wanted the Headbox to become a problem each participant had to solve for themselves. The result is a collection that varies not only in colour, material and technique, but also in the way each artist interprets the very idea of a “mask”.

The results of the expressions observed were carefully thought out and reflected the participating artists. Some of them showed pride in their state, Sarawak, while others were a reflection of their core emotions.

Held at the Wesberly Galleria, Rubber Road West, Kuching, the exhibition was arranged like “The Green Caterpillar” zigzagging around the gallery. This idea, he said, was to enclose visitors yet not swallow them.

“In the arrangement/layout of the Headbox on ‘The Green Caterpillar’ (exhibition panels), I use a ‘fluid narrative’ on certain stretches that are related in themes, ideas, such as ‘persona, individual, identity, communal’, ‘subject matters in history, religion’, art philosophical concepts of destruction, repair, reconstruction, and media, real, collaged, abstracted, fictionalised and objects looked at and those that gaze back,” he shared.

The exhibition, which has over 60 masterpieces designed by the artists, is an installation, with each individual piece taking a ride in the green caterpillar arrangement; each has a story to tell. As a curator, Hung had approached the artists with the question, “What is art, and how do masks affect us?”

Hung’s artwork ‘Diaryhrreeea’, which is inspired by the idea of the mind receiving various types of information from the internet, whether good or bad.

With that, he complimented the work of each artist, noting that the Headbox can transform the perception of a person by wearing it, and that the Headbox takes on a new meaning with someone’s head inside the Headbox — an analogy that every individual’s perception is different, though the journey may be the same.

And when placed within the gallery, away from the human head, that same object is transformed again. It becomes an art object, open to observation, interpretation and critique. In this sense, the exhibition asks visitors to consider how context influences perception.

The question becomes less about what each box represents and more about what happens when something is placed on a head, displayed on a wall or encountered as part of an installation.

Hung said this was also why he chose not to limit participation strictly to established artists. Without a precedent or fixed format for the Headbox project, he accepted submissions from anyone he approached, including children.

“Diversity paradoxically works better with a common denominator, which is the cube, otherwise it’s just a bunch of different things,” he said.

That common denominator is the cube itself — a form Hung connects to Plato’s Platonic solid and its association with Earth. And as each artwork carries a deeper meaning on its own, together in “The Green Caterpillar”, it demonstrates how a single form can become many things when placed in different hands.

This, then, became an integral part of the exhibition, a harmony when together. While certain sections bring together works linked by themes such as persona, individuality, identity and community, others explore history, religion, destruction, repair and reconstruction.

A visitor looks at the artwork at the exhibition.

And perhaps that is the most fitting way to encounter Headbox: not as a collection of identical objects, but as a reminder that even when people are given the same starting point, they will see, interpret and express the world differently.

Held until September 27, the “Headbox” exhibition is open to visitors from 11 am to 9 pm.