Danny Yung is an experimental art pioneer and one of Hong Kong’s most influential artists. He is a founding member and co-artistic director of Zuni Icosahedron. In the past 40 years, Yung has been working extensively in diverse fields of arts, including theatre, cartoon, film, video as well as visual and installation art. In the span of his 50-year artistic profession, Yung has been involved in over 100 theatre productions as director, scriptwriter, producer and/or stage designer. His theatre works were staged in multiple cities across the world, including Tokyo, Yokohama, Toga, Singapore, Jakarta, Taipei, Shanghai, Nanjing, Shenzhen, Brussels, Berlin, Munich, Hannover, London, Lisbon, Rotterdam, Dubai and New York. In 2008, commissioned by the Hong Kong Arts Festival, he created Tears of the Barren Hill, a theatre work reflecting on the innovation of traditional Chinese theatre and the institution of cultural exchange, which earned him the Music Theatre NOW Award of the International Theatre Institute (ITI). In 2010, at the Shanghai Expo, Yung, in collaboration with the renowned Japanese theatre director Makoto Sato, showed The Tale of the Crested Ibis, a cultural exchange project which combined, for the first time, elements of noh and kun theatres as well as traditional arts and cutting-edge (robot) technology. The annual Toki Festival, curated by Yung since 2012, develops the concept of the Crested Ibis, or Toki, in an effort to enrich young kun performers’ experience and promote exchanges between contemporary and traditional performing arts in Asian regions. Yung is among the pioneers of Hong Kong’s experimental film and video. His short films, videos and installations have been shown in Berlin, New York, London, Rotterdam, Copenhagen, Tokyo and Hong Kong since 1980s. His Tian Tian Xiang Shang conceptual comics, figurines and sculptures have been exhibited in Hong Kong, Shanghai, Beijing, Tokyo, Taipei, Singapore, Ann Arbor, Paris, Milan, Washington DC, Seattle, Toronto and Mexican City. Yung’s TTXS flower plaque installation at the National Mall, DC Washington, was the biggest installation art work ever-built and commissioned by the Smithsonian Folklife Festival. The artist keeps a close eye on the arts and cultural policy and on education development in Hong Kong and the Asia-Pacific region. He currently serves as chairman of the Hong Kong–Taipei–Shenzhen–Shanghai City-to-City Cultural Exchange Conference and a member of the Design Council of Hong Kong. He was also appointed the inaugural Dean’s Master Artist in Drama of the Hong Kong Academy for Performing Arts in 2013, and he serves on the Management Board of the HKICC Lee ShauKee School of Creativity and the advisory boards of the Department of Cultural Studies of Hong Kong’s Lingnan University and the School of Drama of the Hong Kong Academy for Performing Arts. In 2009, Yung was awarded the Cross of Merit of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany in recognition of his achievements and contributions to cultural exchanges between Germany and Hong Kong. . In 2014, Yung was awarded the Fukuoka Prize (Arts and Culture). In 2022, Yung accepted the Award for Outstanding Contribution in Arts presented by the Hong Kong Arts Development Council.
