Chinese New Zealand Artists Hui 2013 Event

The Chinese Artists Hui was a gathering of approximately 20 artists of Chinese heritage in New Zealand, held at Corban Estate Arts Centre in 2013. It was the first in a series of loosely connected gatherings that evolved organically during the 2010s.

Initiated by printmaker and educator Kim Lowe, the Hui was organised by a small group of artists that included herself, Simon Kaan (who also lives in Te Wai Pounamu) and Kathryn Tsui (then working as a curator at Corban Estate).

Reflecting on the hui for Hainamana in 2018, Lowe said:

I had been thinking about meeting and exhibiting with other NZ Chinese Artists since the Poll Tax Apology in 2002, (when Helen Clarke apologised to the Chinese for past racist government policies). I started contacting some of the Chinese artists that I knew of and spoke to people like Simon Kaan, Sharon Ng, James and Eva Ng and Harry and Brett Wong. I made some good contacts but couldn’t take it any further because at that time I became too busy teaching High School and having children. […] Also some of us in the South Island often feel like we are left out of the conversation at times. My work is about a New Zealand Chinese identity so it kind of needs to have a conversation with other work in that context so it was also about getting some South Islanders in contact with the north.

The gathering was scheduled to coincide with an exhibition that Tsui was curating at the gallery, Gold Mountain Takeaways, which included the work of Lowe, Kaan and Kerry Ann Lee. Informal in nature, it was an opportunity for artists to meet each other, with no set agenda.

In 2023, at a ten-year anniversary event, Kaan talked about how one of the attendees included artists representing many different generations: including Brent and Harry Wong, Kerry Ann Lee, Wailin Elliott and her daughter Lydia. In the conversation for Hainamana, Lee also noted that there were calls during the hui for “an organisation for funding and focusing on specifically a NZ Chinese identity” — an idea that has recurred many times in conversations around the Aotearoa Asian arts community over the years.

The Hui has been followed by other intermittent gatherings of Chinese and Asian artists, eventually leading to the large festival-style Asian Aotearoa Arts Hui held in Pōneke Wellington in 2018.

A roundtable discussion with Kerry Ann Lee, Kim Lowe & Amy Weng - AAAH2018 | Hainamana

Asian Aotearoa Arts Hui — website