EVENT DESCRIPTION
M+, Asia’s global museum of contemporary visual culture in the West Kowloon Cultural District (WestK) in Hong Kong, will present Lee Mingwei: Guernica in Sand, a large-scale installation and performance staged in The Studio at M+. In this work, Lee Mingwei (American, born Taiwan, 1964) recreates Pablo Picasso’s iconic masterpiece Guernica on a massive scale with sand. The installation will open to the public free of charge from Saturday, 8 March to Sunday, 13 July 2025. It runs parallel to the Special Exhibition The Hong Kong Jockey Club Series: Picasso for Asia—A Conversation, on display in the West Gallery between 15 March and 13 July 2025.
In indigenous and religious traditions around the world, sand painting often embodies impermanence and change. Through this unexpected material, Lee brings these ideas to Picasso’s monumental work. Shaken by the bombing of the town of Guernica in Spain during the country’s civil war, Picasso created several works to express his hatred of war, the most famous being Guernica (1937). By rendering the scenes of violence depicted in Guernica in this transitory medium, Lee invites us to reconsider the nature of chaos and highlights the creative power of transformation.
