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Hong Kong Artist Simon Birch Crowdfunds Huge New York Exhibition

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A group of Hong Kong and Chinese artists led by painter Simon Birch have turned to crowdfunding to raise the last $300,000 needed to stage a large group exhibition at 23 Wall Street, in the heart of New York City’s financial district.“The 14th Factory,” an exhibition nearly three years in the making, would see more than 30 artists take over the 150,000-square-foot building with a series of 14 multimedia installations, making it the largest ever international exhibition staged by a Hong Kong artist.Although nearly $2 million has so far been raised for the exhibition, including $900,000 in the first weeks of March alone from patrons, philanthropists, and businesses, Birch has pinned his hopes on crowdfunding to secure the final $300,000, fundraising during Hong Kong Art Week while also running a Kickstarter campaign with a goal of $25,000.If funded, “The 14th Factory” would showcase a wide array of creative practices from Asia and beyond, including film, photography, performance, and landscape design. The name of the planned exhibition references the Thirteen Factories, a sanctioned Western trading zone in Canton that was the location of a number of violent encounters in the 18th century. “The 14th Factory” would be, according to a statement from its organizers, “a lost or imagined space, through which artistic director Simon Birch and the community of artists reclaim the fundamental purpose of a ‘factory’ — as a place of meaningful production, new possibilities, and regeneration.”Significantly, this regeneration would take place at a building that once held banking company J.P. Morgan but has been derelict since being bought in 2008 by a group linked to mysterious billionaire Sam Pa. As Birch explained, the space was chosen because “the vision behind ‘The 14th Factory’ was to support Hong Kong artists on an international level, and what greater platform than Wall Street, New York?”

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