HONG KONG.- M+, Asia’s global museum of contemporary visual culture in the West Kowloon Cultural District in Hong Kong, is proud to present Myths and Monsters: The Art of Fantasy in Asia, a Special Exhibition exploring fantasy’s role in Asian visual culture and its global impact. Spanning the nineteenth to twenty-first centuries, this is the first major survey to trace how artists have used fantasy to navigate the world and their times. The exhibition will be on view in the West Gallery at M+ from Saturday, October 17, 2026 to Sunday, April 4, 2027.
Artists across Asia have long used imaginative stories, characters, and universes to confront complex social realities. More than mere escapism, fantasy is a powerful way of reimagining the world. From Tibetan Buddhist scrolls and Surrealist dreamscapes to anime’s fictional worlds, this exhibition reveals how supernatural and fantastical storytelling evolved in response to shifting socio-political conditions over two centuries. Featuring more than 400 works across art, architecture, fashion, manga, animation, video games, and digital culture, the exhibition reveals historical connections among artistic traditions and mediums rarely explored together, while highlighting how they continue to move across disciplines and regions today.
Spirits Among Us: Fantasy in the 1800s
The first section contextualises the longstanding role of fantasy in East Asian cultures as a means of expressing collective desires for safety, protection, and prosperity. It brings together ukiyo-e woodblock prints, Chinese shadow puppets, Tibetan Buddhist thangkas, hand-painted yokai scrolls, and everyday objects. Also on view is Oscar Chan Yik Long’s Fear Catcher (2026), a commissioned site-specific ink mural inspired by Zhong Kui, the King of Ghosts.
Strange Realities: Surrealism and Asia
The exhibition then explores the Asian history of Surrealism, bringing works by Giorgio de Chirico, Salvador Dal, and Ren Magritte into dialogue with regional artists including Kim Younghwan, Pratuang Emjaroen, Harue Koga, Pang Hiunkin, Okamoto Taro, and others. Spanning China, Japan, Korea, Myanmar, the Philippines, and Thailand, these artists developed distinct surrealist languages rooted in their own cultural histories and experiences.
From Godzilla to Ghost in the Shell: Fantasy Meets Pop Culture
Following World War II (1939–1945), Japanese popular culture began to capture the imagination of international audiences. Tezuka Osamu, known as the Godfather of Manga, introduced Astro Boy (1952), later adapted into a globally successful anime, while Godzilla (1954) quickly grew into a global cinematic sensation. This section explores how pop culture’s fantastical worlds addressed loss, social upheaval, and hopes for a better world. It spotlights creators and original art across manga, anime, tokusatsu, and video games, with sections focused on manga’s globalisation and fantastical worldbuilding in anime such as Akira (1988) and Ghost in the Shell (1995).
New Mythologies: Asian Fantasy Goes Global
Bringing visitors into the globalised present, the final section considers contemporary artistic responses to fantastical pop culture. Inspired by age-old stories and urgent contemporary issues, artists working across visual art, design, architecture, moving image, and digital culture explore fluid identity, technological anxiety, fandom, and reimagined mythologies. Highlights include works by Ayoung Kim, Lawrence Lek, Takashi Murakami, Ho Tzu Nyen, Philippe Parreno, Rirkrit Tiravanija, Windowsen, Fujimori Terunobu, and LuYang.
M+ will host public programmes and film screenings to complement the exhibition and extend the experience for visitors, including the free talk Living Legends: Exploring Supernatural Forces in Asian Visual Culture at the M+ Grand Stair on the exhibition’s opening day.
M+ and Thames & Hudson have also co-published
Myths, Monsters, and Manga: The Art of Fantasy in Asia, which presents new research on fantastical imagery in Asian art and its impact on global visual culture. Featuring more than 200 illustrations, the publication is available in Traditional Chinese and English.
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