Christy Li, head of communications at Asia Art Archive (AAA), remembers climbing eight flights of stairs to late Hong Kong artist Ha Bik Chuen's To Kwa Wan home in the summer of 2015. Within was a labyrinth of collage books, pictorial magazines, catalogues and photos of the acclaimed sculptor and printmaker's 1,500-plus global exhibitions. Some were neatly packaged into towering boxes, others were scattered about in scrolls and loose albums sandwiched between dusty tiled floors and a ceiling flaking from years of water damage.

"We were like forensic scientists trying to solve a crime, deciphering and picking apart his prized treasures," Li recalls.

The materials were a gold mine to Li and her team, who spent a year packing and transporting them to AAA's now-defunct project space in Fo Tan to be organized and documented. These archives are now a part of an extensive assemblage in its Sheung Wan office that contains more than 130,000 digital and physical records. It's an impressive upgrade from the sole bookshelf the non-profit had when it was first founded, in 2000, by Claire Hsu and Johnson Chang.

Now celebrating its 25th anniversary, Li says AAA has made meaningful strides but always keeping in mind its important mission of "being a free platform where the public can learn about parts of Asian contemporary art that's neglected by mainstream media".

Testament to this is the addition of a zine library in 2019. Short for fanzine, zines are self-published, small-circulated publications often handmade or produced in limited quantities – meaning not many places bother to collect them. It's one of Li's favorite corners of the center.

"Zines come in all shapes and sizes, so we've captured them in the same way record albums are displayed," she says. "They foster and reveal alternative communities that are meant to be shared. They're far from mainstream media so it makes sense for AAA to offer them a home."

AAA, Li says, is not a traditional library, which she says conducts active acquisitions under clear categories. What she and her team do, instead, involves intense scoping and researching processes for materials – physical or otherwise – that offer better context for the artists and their artwork under content priorities such as art writing, complex geographies, exhibition history, innovation through tradition, pedagogy, performance art and gender diversity. A recent focus includes independent art spaces.

After the 2014 scavenger mission in Ha's apartment, for instance, came residencies and inspirations that sparked exhibitions, research projects and even a concert that discussed issues such as the desires and compulsions to accumulate; how archiving shapes practices of artists; as well as the notion of "connections", respectively.

Thanks to the city's investments in art and the erection of world-class museums and gallery spaces like M+ and Tai Kwun, Li says AAA has not only seen more visitors and program participants interested in contemporary art, but also a mitigation of offerings. Since M+'s launch of children and youths' programs, AAA has shifted the target audience of its educational programs from students to teachers, bringing events like teaching labs, artists' talks and even workshops on archiving. Its mission, after all, is to fill gaps in the writing of art history.

Female-Focused

Another major milestone at AAA is its spotlight on women artists in Asia – the fruit of what Li calls a "much-needed reminder" when anonymous artist activist group Guerrilla Girls alerted that women artists' archives made up only six per cent of AAA's collection in 2018.

Since then, though having since expanded the pillar to "gender diversity", AAA has been proactively backing programs that center on women-focused subjects. In 2018, it kicked off the biannual Wikipedia Edit-a-thon that invited participants to create, edit and enrich the free database's articles about women artists in and from Asia, as well as other subject matters. To date, it has created and improved more than 200 articles on women artists.

Most recently, it hosted the "In Our Own Backyard" exhibition that highlights artworks and archival materials of South Asian artists Sheba Chhachhi and Lala Rukh, diving into their respective engagement with women's movements.

Future of Archiving

Aside from a heightened interest for Asian art, Li has also noticed growing attention on archiving itself since the pandemic, when pride for Hong Kong's distinguished identity sparked a hunger to collect and preserve its memories. Today, AAA is a helpful consultant for a handful of organisations curious in learning about the equipment and structures required in establishing its own archives.

Internally, meanwhile, AAA opened the doors to Digitisation Lab (D-Lab) in July, complete with a loading dock and a processing area so pristine that outside footwear is banned. Once the materials are cleaned and sorted, they are transported to the digital room where elaborate audio-visual equipment and four scanners of different purposes and sizes call home.

"Many people think archiving is just scanning things; but it's far from it," Li laughs. "Aside from offering information on Asian artists, we also want to showcase the importance and relevance of archiving."

Last year, AAA began offering school tours themed in storytelling, memory keeping and creating visual art diaries. With the help of the newest D-Lab, she hopes that her non-profit can eventually train up the next generation of professional archivists.

"We're always trying to catch up on digitising because it's the best medium to reach today's readers; and physical materials take up a lot of space," says Li. Having relocated to its Sheung Wan home in 2007, AAA underwent a year-long renovation only three years ago, expanding the library's shelving and event spaces by 3,000 sqft, within which includes The Hong Kong Room – a space dedicated to the writing of the city's art histories. Yet, Li claims space is already "getting tight".

"AAA is trying to find a permanent home; but this is Hong Kong; space is always a challenge. There are a lot of gaps we're on a mission to fill, so while we're happy that representation of Asian art has grown multifold since we first began, our libraries keep growing – it's a happy problem indeed."