Is this our dystopian future? Hong Kong artist Michelle Fung’s vision on display
Not 1984, but 2084: Michelle Fung imagines a dystopian future in art that’s in part a response to consumerism and environmental woes
In 2022, Hong Kong artist Michelle Kuen Suet Fung spent a month exploring the Arctic Circle, starting in Longyearbyen in Norway’s Svalbard archipelago, the world’s northernmost settlement with a population greater than 1,000.
A town of about 2,500 people, it is a place of extremes. For three months of the year the sun shines 24 hours a day; this is followed by three months of total darkness.
For Fung, who spent most of her time sailing around the archipelago, it was the majestic mountains, towering glaciers and extreme light variations that drew her there.
The polar landscape, she says, was the perfect inspiration for her research into Northlandia.
You are excused for not having heard of it – Northlandia is a fantasy country built in Fung’s vivid imagination and forms part of her interdisciplinary work centred around a dystopian five-nation world in the year 2084.