Last month, Parasite, Hong Kong’s most historic independent arts organization, appointed its new executive director: James Taylor Foster, who will lead its next chapter as the non-profit enters its 30th anniversary. He belongs to a generation of millennial art professionals who combine international backgrounds with a fluid approach to their roles and move easily between disciplines. Taylor Foster’s practice links contemporary art, design, architecture, and digital culture, embracing the idea of contemporaneity that can only be understood through its in-betweenness. This interplay between fields aligns well with an organization like Para Site, which over the years has gained a reputation as a leading platform for independent expression and experimentation, both in Hong Kong and more widely.
“I think fluidity is really important,” Taylor Foster told the Observer when we met during Hong Kong Art Week. “We have to accept the fabric in which artists and creatives work today: an interdisciplinary and completely isolated practice.” He told the Observer that the traditional separation of contemporary art into distinct branches – visual art, design, architecture and digital culture – may still be important, but approaching each discipline now requires adopting a broader lens. He added: “We have to see that all of this is part of contemporary culture, and also of popular culture, and it is a very important thread in my work,” noting the necessity of “working between the cracks.”
Before joining Para Site, he was a senior curator at ArkDes in Stockholm, where he played a key role in reorganizing architecture exhibitions away from static, specialist presentations towards immersive, interdisciplinary formats. His curatorial and artistic projects have embraced fluidity in various ways, exploring questions of queer belonging and working at the critical intersection where creativity meets new developments in technology and popular culture, all within the context of today’s urban experience. His most recent group exhibition – “Worldglimpsing” (2025-27), currently on view at ArkDes/Moderna Museet in Stockholm, with its second act opening at Nieuwe Instituut in Rotterdam later this year – exemplifies his approach in that it explores two intertwined forms of creativity: “worlds,” designing alternative worlds, and “role-playing,” the act of imagining and playing as alternative versions of ourselves, as civilians And politicians. It works on imagining, rehearsing and embodying the present while imagining the future.
For an organization like Para Site, which has always operated between the cracks in a kind of liminal space, there is real flexibility in this way of working. “Para Site can take this full range of practices and synthesize them in a way that not only resonates with a rich community already engaged in contemporary art, but also reaches a broader range,” he said, acknowledging that Hong Kong, like any major city, has its own niche audiences but also millions of people who do not engage with practices associated with contemporary artistic expression. “For me, the real power is in thinking across disciplines.”
This is not the first time Taylor Foster has brought his vision to Hong Kong. His traveling exhibition A Strange Feeling Feels Good: The World of ASMR (2020-25) explores ASMR as a global culture emerging from the Internet, and was presented last year at Gate33/AIRSIDE. His practice has always had a global breadth and a local focus, within the context of the communities it serves.
During our conversation, Taylor-Foster described contemporary culture as operating at two levels—one rooted in local and regional contexts, the other unfolding across transnational and linguistic networks on a global scale. He stressed that “the real potential lies in the ability to reconcile these two realities.” “When you can do that, you can create something quite extraordinary, because big themes that resonate regionally or internationally are interpreted and reshaped by local practitioners.” It’s about finding those nuances and genres that speak to what he describes as “public life in general”—the ways in which we all exist together in an increasingly complex and mediated world. In this context, he said that artists and creatives are under increasing pressure to rethink how artistic production works today.
Over the course of three decades, Para Site has become one of the most important incubators of artistic practices, curatorial and creativity more broadly. Looking to the future, Taylor-Foster examines how the organization can begin to bring together diverse practices in new ways while maintaining its forward-looking stance. “Para Site has always been not only a vital incubator for artistic practices, but also always a step forward. I want to make sure we continue to address that in this next chapter.”
Para Site traditionally operates in the space between care and support. “I think those are two very different things,” he said, adding that any cultural organization can provide support, but very few can nurture in an authentic and sustainable way. “Care can involve long time frames; it involves experimentation, and sometimes failure.”
The organization is entering a new phase of self-definition, building on the foundations laid during the leadership of the previous generation. “The last 30 years have been amazing, and Billy Tang’s tenure has led to this moment. Now, I think Parasite can be more confident in being herself,” Taylor-Foster said. One of the first hurdles will be adapting to the city’s evolving cultural geography: moving out of an existing space may be necessary, but “in a city like Hong Kong, where real estate is at a premium, it’s crucial that we don’t rush into moving to a new space. Any future space must emerge from a clear vision and strategy so that the space itself supports what we want to do.”
From here, Taylor-Foster suggested that Para Site might begin to live up to its name by operating more flexible and adaptive, though he acknowledged that the exact form this might take has yet to be determined.
Through discussion of institutional models, including the recent case in which the ICA SF was transformed into a nomadic museum, Taylor-Foster acknowledges how more nomadic models allow organizations to redistribute resources and support artistic production more dynamically. In Hong Kong, where financial pressures such as rents are as important as in cities like New York or San Francisco, this allows for a different distribution of resources and more flexible support for production.
“It’s a question of where we invest our resources,” he said. “We’re not the richest organization in Hong Kong, but we have an incredibly supportive community. When you look at budgets today, rent takes up a large proportion, so the question becomes: How can we best use what we have?”
He’s quick to admit that giving up a fixed space also means losing other things; Ultimately, it’s best to find the right balance between stability and mobility. The main driver going forward will be the idea of “coming together” – not gathering the same people over and over again, but nurturing and slowly expanding communities, locally and regionally. “What does it mean for Parasite to be ‘parasitic’ in Bangkok? In Seoul? What happens when we become a space for exchange across different contexts?” consider. Collaborations are the obvious starting point, but he argues that the most important are “unlikely alliances” – partnerships that may not seem obvious at first but that open up new ways of thinking about contemporary culture.
Taylor Foster still believes strongly in the power of exhibition. However, he suggested that Parasite perhaps needed to be less tied to performances as a central form even as it was defined, like many other cultural institutions, by its architecture. “This can be empowering, but it can also become an obstacle,” he noted. “After 10 years in Quarry Bay, I think the team and artists have pushed this space as far as it can go. It has hosted many wonderful exhibitions, but now is the time to rethink the architecture…to change it.”
His immediate priority once he fully assumes that role at the end of the spring will be listening. Rather than rushing through the work, he plans to take a deliberate pause to better understand the organization’s community and internal dynamics — a situation he acknowledged may be at odds with Hong Kong’s fast pace. A period of reflection will precede any relocation or temporary nomadic phase. The latter could serve as a moment for institutional experimentation and redefinition, and an opportunity to rebuild and redefine the organization’s identity, he said. “Para Site already has a strong global reputation, even among people who have never been to Hong Kong before,” he added. “The mission now is to strengthen this further, while ensuring the organization feels refreshed and ready for the next chapter by 2027. I see myself as overseeing this next phase, but the goal is for Para Site to be here in 40 years. This means strengthening internal structures, as well as building a new generation of sponsors to support its long-term future.”
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