“Zaha Hadid: There Should Be No End To Experimentation” exhibition debuts in Hong Kong

Zaha Hadid, who passed away nearly one year ago, once said, “With experimentation, you think you’re going to find out one thing, but you actually discover something else ... more than you bargain for.” Ceaseless experimentation was the root of Zaha Hadid's architectural practice, as depicted in her early drawings and paintings. The Serpentine Galleries and Zaha Hadid Design teamed up to showcase Hadid's artistic prowess in the exhibition, “Zaha Hadid: There Should Be No End To Experimentation”, which opened today at the ArtisTree gallery in Hong Kong.

Presenting Hadid's work in Hong Kong for the first time, the exhibition shows her paintings, calligraphic drawings, and rarely seen private notebooks with sketches that illustrate the complexity of her ideas. Since the idea for her art exhibition was first conceived with Hadid herself, the Hong Kong exhibition also includes additional archival material from last year's London exhibition at the Serpentine Sackler Gallery.

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The exhibition focuses on Hadid’s early works from the 1970s to the early 1990s, before her first building — the Vitra Fire Station in Germany — opened in 1993. It includes her seminal work, The Peak (1982-83), which received first prize in a design competition for a leisure club on Victoria Peak above Hong Kong. Influenced by Malevich, Tatlin and Rodchenko, Hadid created calligraphic drawings as her primary method for visualizing her architectural ideas. 

It also presents Hadid's architectural visions through four immersive virtual reality experiences developed in collaboration with Google Arts and Culture, and a screening room at the gallery will show exclusive footage from the Zaha Hadid archive. ArtisTree visitors can also take a mobile tour — featuring stories, audio clips, and additional drawings from Hadid's collection — on their smartphones to create a more interactive gallery experience.

“We are honored to bring this expanded exhibition of our friend and long-term collaborator Zaha Hadid to Hong Kong – the very place that launched her reputation as a global architectural pioneer,” said Serpentine Galleries CEO Yana Peel and Artistic Director Hans Ulrich Obrist in a statement. “Her declaration that ‘there should be no end to experimentation’ has not only become a mantra for the Serpentine Galleries but is the basis on which this showcase of Zaha’s visionary talent and legacy was conceived in her own lifetime.”

The exhibition will be open until April 6, 2017.

All images courtesy of Serpentine Galleries.