Zheng Mahler – A Season in Shell

This book documents a research project by the Hong Kong-based collective Zheng Mahler in collaboration with Zurich’s Johann Jacobs Museum. In 2013, Artist Royce Ng and anthropologist Daisy Bisenieks engaged in fieldwork amongst African traders, businessmen and asylum seekers in Hong Kong. Their focus was on the Chungking Mansions trading hub, where their artistic and scientific research became entwined with the Red Sea Trading company, run by a Somali-born businessman known as the Bull. Zheng Mahler trace the passage of pink abalones, collected by a co-operative of Somali fishermen, to the informal dried seafood markets in Hong Kong, where the Bull has been selling the abalone meat. Simultaneously, the fishermen devised a trade route for the abalone shells from Berbera to Dubai and onwards to China, where they are treated, polished and refined into mother of pearl and sold at profit to Hong Kong jewellers and Swiss watch makers for use as ornamental parts of time pieces.

Zheng Mahler - A Season in Shell tells this story, in which distinctions between art and science, business and culture, documentary and fiction are constantly subverted. The monthly reports Ng and Bisenieks sent to the museum and a wealth of images reconstruct the progress of their research. Published alongside are essays that investigate relevant aspects, such as the circumstances of African migrants in Hong Kong or the potential and importance of artistic research.

Text in English and Chinese.