Para Site at 30: New Director Charts Future for Hong Kong Art

A New Chapter at 30

Para Site, Hong Kong longest-running independent art institution, marks its 30th anniversary this year under new leadership. James Taylor-Foster, a 33-year-old British curator, filled the vacant executive director seat last month. He inherits an organization that has evolved from an artist-run space founded in 1996 by seven Hong Kong artists into a curatorially driven institution with an international reputation.

The previous directors, including Tobias Berger, Cosmin Costinas and Billy Tang, each shaped Para Site into a recognized platform in Asia and beyond. Taylor-Foster arrives with a different background than his predecessors. Rather than emerging primarily from contemporary visual art, his career has spanned architecture, design and digital culture, shaped by nearly a decade at ArkDes, Sweden national museum for architecture and design affiliated with Moderna Museet. There he co-curated projects including Weird Sensation Feels Good: The World of ASMR, an exhibition on sensory culture that toured internationally, including to Hong Kong.

What Changes and What Stays

Taylor-Foster frames his vision as both a continuation and a rupture. He wants contemporary art to sit within a larger family of creative practices, creating room for work that is more blended and porous across music, dance and live art. The challenge, as he sees it, is less about scale than about how audiences encounter Para Site. He does not think the institution should be just for a niche, contemporary art-educated audience. He wants to lower the threshold of what it means to engage with what happens at Para Site without lowering the ambition of what it does.

That may also reshape exhibition formats. Rather than adding to a city already dense with thematic group exhibitions, Taylor-Foster points to approaches that give artists greater control, where even simple gestures might reshape how audiences encounter the space. The gallery scene in Hong Kong has changed dramatically since Para Site was founded. M+, Tai Kwun and the Centre for Heritage, Arts and Textile (CHAT) have reshaped the institutional field. Commercial galleries proliferated after the launch of Art Basel Hong Kong in 2013. Para Site no longer occupies the same cultural position it did when it was one of the few contemporary art spaces in the city.

Relocation and Reinvention

A move from Para Site current Quarry Bay premises, where it has operated for the past decade, is now a priority. Taylor-Foster says the institution has pushed the space close to its limits. He frames relocation as an opportunity to rethink the programme and architecture together, asking not how exhibitions fit a given space but what kind of space Para Site next phase might require. The search for a new home will be one of the defining tasks of his early tenure.

The move also raises questions about what an independent art space can be in a transformed cultural landscape. When Para Site was founded in 1996, Hong Kong had few contemporary art spaces and even fewer independent ones. Now the city has a major museum, a thriving commercial gallery sector, and multiple non-profits. Para Site has to justify its existence not by being the only option but by being the best at what it does. Taylor-Foster returns to ideas of generosity and support, describing Para Site as a nurturing garden for developing artists and curators, the people who are going to be the best in their field.

His background at ArkDes gives him a perspective that previous Para Site directors did not bring. At the Swedish national museum for architecture and design, he co-curated projects that crossed disciplinary boundaries, including an exhibition on ASMR that toured internationally. His contribution to the Nordic Pavilion at the Venice Architecture Biennale, twice, suggests an appetite for large-scale, ambitious presentations that could translate to Para Site new space when it materializes. His approach treats contemporary art not as a specialised field but as the present interrogating itself, which means creating room for practices that are more blended and porous across music, dance and live art.

The question of audience is central to his vision. Hong Kong contemporary art audience has expanded significantly since Para Site was founded, but it has also fragmented. M+ draws tourists and general visitors. Commercial galleries cater to collectors. Art Basel Hong Kong brings the international art world for a week each year. Para Site, as an independent non-profit, occupies a different position. It can take risks that institutions cannot, show work that commercial galleries will not, and support artists at stages of their careers when no one else will. Taylor-Foster wants to widen that audience without diluting the programming.

The Political Context

When Para Site was founded in 1996, Hong Kong was three years away from its handover to China. Over the past three decades, the city has undergone political upheaval, including the 2019 protests and the subsequent imposition of the National Security Law. These events have reshaped the cultural landscape, affecting what can be shown, what can be said and who feels welcome. Para Site has navigated these shifts with varying degrees of success, and the next chapter will be shaped by how an independent art space operates in an environment where independence itself has become a more complicated proposition.

His bleached blond hair and dark moustache, and his extremely open online presence, mark a generational shift in how art institutions present themselves. Previous directors operated in a more traditional curatorial mode. Taylor-Foster comes from a world of digital culture and sensory experience, where the boundaries between art, design and audience engagement are deliberately blurred. Whether that translates into a new kind of independent art space in Hong Kong remains to be seen, but the ambition is clear.

A History of Reinvention

Para Site has always been an institution in flux. Founded in 1996 by seven Hong Kong artists who needed a place to show work, it occupied a series of temporary spaces before settling in Sheung Wan and later Quarry Bay. Each move forced a reinvention. The institution grew from an artist-run space into a curatorial platform under Tobias Berger in the early 2000s, then expanded its international profile dramatically under Cosmin Costinas, who directed Para Site from 2011 to 2018 and brought it into conversation with global contemporary art through ambitious exhibitions linking Hong Kong to broader geopolitical and cultural contexts.

Billy Tang, who succeeded Costinas and served until 2023, navigated the institution through the most turbulent period in Hong Kong recent history. The 2019 protests and the onset of the pandemic created conditions under which many independent art spaces globally struggled to survive. Para Site not only survived but continued to programme, adapting to restrictions on gathering by developing online and hybrid formats. The fact that the institution emerged from this period with its reputation intact and its ambitions intact is a credit to the resilience of its staff and the strength of its programme.

The Challenge of Distinction

The independent art space occupies a particular niche in the art ecosystem. It is neither a commercial gallery nor a museum. It does not sell art and it does not collect it. What it does is provide a platform for experimentation, for work that is too risky, too difficult or too unmarketable for either the market or the institution to embrace. Para Site has been particularly good at this over the years, showing artists from Asia and beyond who were not yet on the radar of major museums or commercial galleries.

The question Taylor-Foster faces is how that role changes when the ecosystem around it has grown so dramatically. With M+ now operating as a major museum of visual culture, with Tai Kwun offering historic site-specific commissions, with CHAT exploring textile and heritage, and with a commercial gallery sector that increasingly programmes non-profit-style exhibitions, Para Site can no longer claim to be the only game in town. What it can claim is a history of taking risks that larger institutions cannot, and a network of relationships with artists and curators that has been built over three decades. The challenge is translating that history into a forward-looking programme that justifies continued support.

What Comes Next

Taylor-Foster says listening will absorb his first months in Hong Kong, understanding what is needed and considering what Para Site is capable of being. If reinvention is inevitable, he suggests, it may also involve returning to an earlier impulse: contemporary art not simply as a specialised field but as the present interrogating itself. That means creating room for practices that cross disciplines and defy easy categorization.

The 30th anniversary gives the institution a natural moment to take stock. Founded by artists who wanted a space to show work in a city that had almost nowhere to show it, Para Site has survived handovers, political upheaval, pandemic disruptions and the complete transformation of Hong Kong cultural landscape. The next chapter, under a director who comes from outside the contemporary art world, may look different from the last. The full interview with Taylor-Foster is available at The Art Newspaper, and more information about the institution history and programmes can be found at the Para Site website. For context on how art institutions navigate political pressure, see our guide to understanding abstract art.