Tai Kwun Contemporary presents Anne Imhof: House of Swans, the acclaimed artist’s first major solo exhibition in Asia. Spanning three floors of the JC Contemporary and F Hall galleries in Hong Kong, the exhibition combines monumental installations, paintings, bronze sculptures, video, original music and live performances in a theatrical exploration of desire, discipline and female agency.
Curated by Ying Kwok and Tiffany Leung, the exhibition features an extensive body of works commissioned for Tai Kwun. Drawing on Imhof’s longstanding interest in classical ballet, it recasts the gallery as a stage where movement, spectacle and uncertainty collide.
Urban ruins and bodies in motion
Imhof juxtaposes traditional artistic media with urban structures, including chain-link fences, crowd barriers, metal lockers and a monumental screen lying on the gallery floor. These elements evoke environments governed by rules and routines, probing the tension between freedom and constraint.
In F Hall, footage from DOOM: House of Hope (2025), Imhof’s performance installation at New York’s Park Avenue Armory, places the body at the centre of the exhibition. Nearby, new paintings bear scratched lines and marks that evoke gestures beyond the viewer’s sight. Two vast cloud paintings suggest the stillness before a storm, while a fallen jumbotron displays a countdown alongside footage from DOOM, suspending visitors between anticipation and memory.
Another installation draws on Hong Kong cinema, displaying salvaged film reels from Clear Water Bay Film Studio inside a glass container. The discarded canisters evoke a vanished cinematic era, echoing Imhof’s video work Citizen (2025) in its exploration of history, fiction and spectacle.
A heroine’s search for freedom
At the exhibition’s heart is a new four-act ballet following Amalia, a young woman raised in a society governed by discipline and routine. After encountering the Swans, a group whose movements challenge the established order, she begins questioning her world. Caught between love, conviction and family duty, Amalia must choose whether to conform or reclaim her voice.
The ballet places performers in gallery environments resembling an urban sports field and a dance rehearsal room. On the third floor, a speaker array travels along an overhead track, filling the space with an original score combining classical and electronic music, voices, piano, drums and guitar. Nearby paintings inspired by the Mad Scene from Giselle, the ballet premiered in Paris in 1841, evoke the psychological rupture of betrayal.
Developed with dancers and longtime collaborators Devon Teuscher, Michael Dé La Nuez, Remy Young, Toon Lobach, Daniil Simkin and Eliza Douglas, the performance also features Qingxin Wang, Ryo Kato, Gouta Seki and the corps de ballet of Hong Kong Ballet. Composer Jacob Madden performs his original score, created with Imhof, alongside prerecorded contributions from Ville Haimala and Luke Hülsmann. Musician Levi Strasser also appears in a live performance woven into the ballet, while the music extends throughout the wider exhibition.
Expanding on DOOM: House of Hope (2025), House of Swans merges choreography with exhibition-making, leaving its narrative open to competing interpretations.
Performance dates at Tai Kwun Contemporary
Following special performances on 25 and 26 September 2026, Hong Kong Ballet continues the production on selected weekends through November.
Upcoming dates are 31 October and 1, 7, 8, 14, 15, 21, 22, 28 and 29 November 2026, with sessions from 2:30–3:15 pm and 3:45–4:30 pm.
Through monumental scenography, classical ballet and unsettling imagery, House of Swans examines how individuals negotiate systems of control and reclaim agency within prescribed roles. Imhof’s theatrical world leaves freedom tantalisingly within reach, yet inseparable from the risks of defiance.
