2026/02/27 - 05/31
Curators: Dr Pi Li, Ying Kwok
Associate Curators: Jill Angel Chun, Shuman Wang
Address: F Hall Gallery, JC Contemporary, Tai Kwun Contemporary, 10 Hollywood Road, Central, Hong Kong
Don Gallery is pleased to share that artist ZHANG Ruyi is participating in the group exhibition Stay Connected: Supplying the Globe, presented by Tai Kwun Contemporary. The exhibition is scheduled to run through May 31, 2026.
Since the first industrial revolution of the late eighteenth century, rapid economic transformations have impacted traditional social structures and the natural environment. In China, the economic reforms beginning in the late 1970s brought more than 800 million people out of poverty. Rapid growth improved lives but also left its mark on local ecologies and the social fabric of communities. After China’s rise to become the world’s leading manufacturer in 2010, the country has charted its transition to producing high-tech manufactured goods and
consumer products and to becoming an exporter of capital, technology, and innovative brands.
Supplying the Globe surveys contemporary artists working across China and internationally in a variety of nontraditional media—from installations to performance and participatory projects—who portray the transformative effects of globalisation on the environment, workplaces, communities, and personal histories. Focusing on locally rooted and often untold stories, the exhibition begins with a survey of the legacies of economic development on the natural and built environments before the national and global shifts toward more sustainable, twenty-first century green economies. It then portrays the stories of individual labourers from
industries and regions across the country, who reveal their personal narratives, networks of friendship, and family histories.
Throughout, these diverse perspectives on China and its diaspora map how people’s lives are intertwined with the transnational movement of goods, material, and cultures.
ZHANG Ruyi’s installation, Leaning (2022 / 2026), composed of broken chairs and sculptural cactus plants forming a demolition site, addresses fragility, survival and the traces left behind in rapidly changing cityscapes.
Broken chairs from a demolition site lean against each other alongside sculptural cactus plants—which are known for surviving in harsh conditions. With a sheer screen pierced with cactus spikes and tiled surfaces evoking urban textures, the installation is grounded in a language of quiet resilience. Adapting this work for the historic space of the F Hall Gallery, ZHANG Ruyi reflects on fragility, survival, and the traces left behind in rapidly changing cityscapes. The cactus becomes a symbol of endurance, while the scattered objects hint at lives once present.
