- An art exhibition in Hong Kong honors the history of old and new internet memes.
- Visitors can get temporary tattoos, make custom memes in photo booths, or play in a 4D interactive zone.
- The "meme museum" exhibition was launched in July with meme website 9GAG.
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Memes are front and center at a new exhibit held in Hong Kong.
The exhibition runs through early September and is being touted as the world's first Meme Museum. It features seven main areas that showcase the internet's most renowned inside jokes, according to K11 Art Mall's Instagram page. The seven-story mall in Tsim Sha Tsui looks to "bring art back into everyday living" by featuring exhibits on its shopping premises.
The exhibition was launched in July with 9GAG, a Hong Kong-based website known as a meme-sharing platform.
Visitors can walk down a "time tunnel" to see the history of memes via rows of TV screens. The displays include some viral Hong Kong-style jokes and also honors worldwide classics like the doge, "distracted boyfriend," and Rick rolls.
More recent memes get the spotlight, too, such as Japanese singer Piko Taro's pen-pineapple-apple-pen and the "disappointed cricket fan," who tweeted his delight at being featured.
A photo of the Pakistani man went viral over his irate reaction to a dropped ball in the 2019 Cricket World Cup.
-Sarim Akhtar (@msarimakhtar) July 31, 2021
There's also a temporary tattoo station that offers meme prints, photo booths that create custom memes, and a 4D interactive zone.
An augmented reality exhibit brings models of 2D memes to life as they pass a screen on a conveyor belt, as seen in this YouTube video by Lisa Tang.
One of the highlights at the meme museum, according to organizers, is 9GAG's debut NFT - a collage of memes that it auctioned off for $25,000 in July.
The exhibition is located in the second basement of K11 Art Mall and runs until September 5. Visitors can register on the mall's website or queue there for access, it said.