As the Hong Kong non-profit Para Site marks its 30th anniversary, it navigates a much-changed city under the new leadership of James Taylor-Foster. The 33-year-old British curator filled the seat of executive director last month—which has been empty since last year—of one of Hong Kong’s longest-running independent art institutions.
Taylor-Foster envisions Para Site’s next chapter as “both a continuation and a rupture”, framing contemporary art within a larger family of creative practices. His signature bleached blond hair and dark moustache, and extremely open online presence, are not the only unusual profiles that Taylor-Foster brings to the role. Whereas recent directors emerged primarily from contemporary visual art, his background has involved architecture, design and digital culture, shaped by nearly a decade at ArkDes, Sweden’s national museum for architecture and design that is affiliated with Moderna Museet. There he co-curated projects including Weird Sensation Feels Good: The World of ASMR, an exhibition on sensory culture that toured internationally, including to Hong Kong last year, and contributed twice to the Nordic Pavilion at the Venice Architecture Biennale.
“The legacy [of Para Site] is undeniable, but of course you can’t be burdened by a legacy,” he says, suggesting that the institution must rethink how an independent art space remains distinct in a transformed cultural landscape.
A changed cultural landscape
Founded as an artist-run space in 1996 by seven Hong Kong artists, Para Site emerged at a moment when the city had few contemporary art spaces. Over time, it shifted from an artist-led initiative into a more curatorially driven institution, with internationally recognised directors including Tobias Berger, Cosmin Costinas and Billy Tang helping to establish Para Site as a recognised platform in Asia and beyond. Meanwhile, Hong Kong’s cultural landscape has expanded dramatically: M+, Tai Kwun and the Centre for Heritage, Arts and Textile (CHAT) have reshaped the institutional field, while commercial galleries proliferated after the launch of Art Basel Hong Kong in 2013.
The Para Site team, with new British director James Taylor-Foster in the centre © 2026 Ray Leung
Ahead of his move to Asia, Taylor-Foster said listening would absorb his first months in Hong Kong, understanding what is needed and considering what Para Site is capable of being. If reinvention is inevitable, he suggests, it may also involve returning to an earlier impulse: contemporary art not simply as a specialised field, but as “the present interrogating itself”. To him, that means creating room for practices that are more blended and porous—across music, dance and live art.
Lowering the threshold
For Taylor-Foster, the challenge is less about scale than about how audiences encounter Para Site. “I don’t think Para Site should just be for a niche, contemporary art-educated audience,” he says, adding that he wants to “lower the threshold of what it means to engage with what happens in Para Site without lowering the ambition of what it does”. That may also shape exhibition formats: rather than adding to a city dense with thematic group exhibitions, he points to approaches that give artists greater control, where even “simple gestures” might reshape how audiences encounter the space.
A move from Para Site’s current Quarry Bay premises, where it has operated for the past decade, is now a priority, with Taylor-Foster saying the institution has pushed the space close to its limits. He frames relocation as an opportunity to rethink the programme and architecture together—asking not how exhibitions fit a given space, but what kind of space Para Site’s next phase might require.
Taylor-Foster returns to ideas of generosity and support, suggesting that Para Site’s next phase may depend on renewing the experimental spirit that first defined it. He describes that ethos of Para Site as “a nurturing garden” for developing artists and curators—“the people who are going to be the crème de la crème”.
