Written by Bobo Rok
Curator of the Museum of O Exhibition, Shanghai
Interviewed and Edited by Jennifer J. Lau

My family collects art and I collect myself. Life is a playground for me to explore and experience it to the fullest. I’ve lived in Geneva, London, Jakarta, Tokyo, Hong Kong, Beijing, and Shanghai. These experiences stem from my immense curiosity and yearning for newness and new challenges. I am the sum of these experiences and places: being raised in China, having studied in Europe, and having worked all over the world and in so many different fields. I curate as who I am, in a non-traditional and very personal way.

Shanghai is the one city I find the most affinity with because of its energy and its people. It’s the place where things happen, where modern Chinese culture is being defined. It’s also where China and the world meet. I was born in Hong Kong but spent the first ten years of my life between Hong Kong and Xi’an. I was then sent to boarding school in Switzerland and studied Mathematics at the London School of Economics (LSE). At the age of 16, I created my first company, then I worked in the mining industry in Indonesia, and I created a fashion start-up too.

Museum of O

How did it begin? My partner and I love immersive experiences and we like to be transported physically to a new world. One day in 2018, we were imagining together the exhibition of our dreams, one that we’d like to visit over the weekend in Shanghai and it did not exist. At the time, these kind of experiences were scarce or low quality in Shanghai, so we joked about making it a reality.

Later, we began discussing it with friends and artists around us. When we realized it was resonating with people, we felt it was worth organizing an exhibition — not only for ourselves, but also because there was a public craving for it.

Talking about China in a modern tone is an idea that has been with me for some time. As a Chinese person who acquired much of my education abroad, I am aware of how Chinese culture is perceived overseas — that is, unknown and overlooked — and how it is perceived inside of China (everything Chinese is traditional and not modern). I disagree with both visions. Chinese culture deserves to be known, and deserves to be seen as modern. Asking artists to interpret traditional Chinese elements into modern art installations is my contribution to developing confidence in the modernity of China.

And timing was perfect. You have more and more artists and fashion designers in China expressing this idea in their own way. Angel Chen, for example, came to visit the exhibition and loved it. Our cultural project is the combination of a vision on Chinese culture shared with the creative youth of the country and the global thirst for immersive experiences. Quite a few artists came to see the exhibition and want to collaborate with us in the future. It seems the two things I am passionate about collided at the perfect moment.  

If I were to change anything about the exhibition, I would host more numerous and diverse events. We had a few great events: a dinner hosted in our blue porcelain room where a chef interpreted the 9 installations into 9 dishes; a couple of parties; and live performances. But it is what I miss the most now that the exhibition is closed! We have plenty of ideas for future exhibitions to be the next steps. We will take the same idea of modern colourful Chinese art experiences and collaborate with other artists to trigger a different set of emotions.

I would love to bring the exhibition to other locations and help design a youthful hotel with strong Chinese themes. An Indonesian with Chinese background came to visit the exhibition in Shanghai and wants to bring it to Jakarta, where there is an important Indonesian-Chinese community. We are creating a concept mixing modern colourful Chinese culture with local influences — still immersive and experiential, of course.

Out of the many visitors’ reactions about our exhibition, those from our ABC (American-born Chinese) visitors comforted me in the necessity of the message we expressed through our work and the work of the artists. One Californian with Chinese background explained to me how he always felt a bit like the underdog in the United States, and that he was not expressing Chinese culture by fear of rejection by those around him. At our exhibition he was proud of a culture that was rich in its heritage, as well as being modern. Politics was out the picture, for the better. The focus was Art and Culture.

On Fête Chinoise

The scale and level of the events Fête Chinoise hosts are grand, luxury, and unique. I am so impressed and I would love to join the next gala when things are healthy again around the world. Fête Chinoise Signature Events are a source of pride in our heritage (both Chinese and Chinese Canadian) by bringing out the best of our culture and making it relevant to today's crowd. I wish that more activities, like Fête Chinoise events, surrounding Chinese culture, its modernity, and its relationship with other cultures would be created and delivered with such great taste and quality. This is needed both outside and within China proper. From outside, to make the culture shine; and from the inside, to have better modern content.

We created our own exhibition to trigger curiosity, creativity (with artistic interactions), and pride in our culture and we hope to work together and express contemporary Chinese culture internationally!

We look forward to it as well. Congratulations again to your fantastic work in Shanghai, Bobo!