The 14th edition of HKFOREWORD25 opens on August 28, 2025, at 10 Chancery Lane Gallery, becoming not merely a platform for new graduates but a manifesto of a generation growing up amid waves of migration, uncertainty, and cultural transformation.
This year, twelve young artists were selected from three Hong Kong universities and two overseas institutions. Their works span painting, video, installation, ceramics, sculpture, animation, artist books — and even a live performance at the opening. The goal is to reveal how this new generation perceives its place in the world and how it challenges the predetermined boundaries of identity. The participating artists are Frankie Au, Tiffany Chan, Hugh Cheng, Thomas Fung, Jenny Jiang, Jonathan Kan, Monica Lam, Lola Law, Stephanie Teng, Jocelyn Tsui, Louise Wan, and Yuen Lok Yiu, Vera.

Searching for Home While Losing It

Since 2020, Hong Kong has experienced a significant wave of migration — families dispersed, borders shifted, connections blurred. Young artists, on the verge of graduation, find themselves suspended between home and street, memory and present. These themes form the emotional and conceptual backbone of the exhibition.

The exhibition unites a diverse group of artists exploring the elusive concept of home, both literal and metaphorical, through painting, sculpture, performance, and installation. Architect and educator Frankie Au breaks free from the rigid precision of architectural training, revealing hidden dimensions of the self through ajar doors and spectral color, while Jocelyn Tsui transforms her portable artist’s books into flexible wall hangings that reflect a transient lifestyle between Hong Kong and abroad. Lola Law’s Rain Dogs depicts a drifter navigating stormy seas, evoking the human experience of displacement, and Stephanie Teng’s blown-glass orbs, paired with a stone carried from Hong Kong to the UK, embody fragility, resilience, and the emotional pull of returning home. Resistance and critique of social order also permeate the exhibition: Tiffany Chan’s gilded horse challenges manipulated historical narratives, Thomas Fung recontextualizes propagandistic imagery from Hong Kong television into painterly dissent, Jenny Jiang’s visceral performance confronts reproductive autonomy, and Louise Wan’s kinetic sculpture transforms mechanical repetition into a meditation on invisible labor in an age of automation. Together, these works map a complex interplay of memory, identity, belonging, and resistance, revealing home as both a personal and collective terrain, continually negotiated, fragile yet luminous, and forever in flux.

Today’s reality poses a question: where do we return when “home” itself becomes a symbol of displacement? Many artists turn personal experiences of relocation and in-betweenness into methods of self-discovery and artistic expression.

Artists and Their Visual Stories

Frankie Au (b. 1989, Hong Kong) is an artist and architect whose practice navigates the intersections of visual art, architecture, and the creative possibilities that emerge between them. Merging painting and drawing, his work oscillates between spontaneity and rationality, reflecting his dual identity as both painter and architect.

His pieces feature fragmented architectural elements intertwined with childlike imagination, negotiating with one another within the pictorial space to create fluidity, impermanence, and playfulness. By experimenting with hybrid visual languages, Au challenges conventional boundaries between art and architecture.

As a practicing architect, he has worked in New York and Hong Kong, focusing on community architecture, exhibition spaces, and installation design, often bridging interdisciplinary projects across art and the built environment. Alongside his practice, he teaches architecture at The University of Hong Kong, mentoring master students transitioning into the field from other disciplines. Au holds a Master of Architecture from Harvard University Graduate School of Design (2016), a Master of Arts in Fine Arts from The Chinese University of Hong Kong (2025), and a Bachelor of Arts in Architectural Studies from The University of Hong Kong (2011).

Lola Law (b. 2003, Hainan, China) is an artist whose practice explores the tension between instinct and thought through painting and drawing. Her drawings capture immediate, instinctual responses, while her paintings convey layered depth and emotional weight, transforming the canvas into a space where chaos and order coexist.

Law channels emotion, memory, and observation into abstract-figurative hybrids, creating visual dialogues on identity, vulnerability, and resilience. Her work suggests bodily presence through gestural choreography and contours, resisting fixed narratives while reflecting the fragility and strength of shared humanity. She recently received her Bachelor of Fine Arts from The Chinese University of Hong Kong.

Stephanie Teng (b. 1989, Hong Kong) is a multidisciplinary artist whose practice investigates the liminal through the subliminal, exploring the tensions and tenderness between emotional states that cultivate resilience in the face of fear. Working across sculpture, photography, video, sound, and text, her work reflects experiences of generational displacement, cultural hybridity, and collective healing.

Teng’s assemblages navigate presence and absence, grief and transformation, drawing on Plato’s notion of “Metaxy”—the generative space between opposing states. Informed by her background in psychology, she examines how perception is shaped by systems of control and how new narratives of ecology and home can emerge through decolonial perspectives. Her rhizomatic process begins with rigorous research into ancient philosophies, languages, and mysticism, translating into poetic interventions that challenge binaries and humanize what society often pathologizes, fostering spaces for healing and collective reflection.

Her work has been exhibited internationally, including Tate Modern, Camden Art Centre, Royal College of Art, Art Central Hong Kong, The Mills (HK), and the Hong Kong Arts Centre. She has been featured in Tatler (HK), Prestige (HK), Madame Figaro (HK), Elle HK, Shado Magazine (UK), The DoDo (UK), and PhotoMonitor (UK), and has lectured at institutions such as Hong Kong University, City University School of Creative Media, Royal College of Art, and Asia Society x Art Central.

Tiffany Chan (b. 2003, Hong Kong) creates paintings that intertwine daydreams, personal memories, cultural heritage, and historical relics into surreal, contemplative narratives. Drawing inspiration from East and Southeast Asian art history, she layers symbolic imagery to bridge tangible and intangible realities.

Through processes of layering, retracing, and erasing, Chan investigates the inherent meaninglessness of nihilism, transforming collected images of artifacts and paintings into ambiguous works that challenge viewers to reconsider manipulated historical narratives. She recently earned her Bachelor of Fine Arts from The Chinese University of Hong Kong and has participated in group exhibitions including BOOKED: Hong Kong Art Book Fair, Hong Kong (2023); Eaton, Hong Kong (2024); and Studio 126, South Korea (2025).

Thomas Fung (b. 1993, Hong Kong) investigates the boundaries between painting and image, exploring the liminal space between fiction and non-fiction within the pictorial realm and questioning the possibilities of painting in contemporary art.

Working across painting, prints, and ink, Fung reinterprets low-resolution images from 1990s and 2000s Hong Kong government TV Announcements in the Public Interest (APIs), detaching them from their original propagandistic context and presenting them through a painterly lens. His work probes how mass-culture imagery shapes perception and influences modern society, revealing the subtle forces that guide collective memory and consciousness. Fung recently earned his Master of Fine Arts from The Chinese University of Hong Kong, following a Bachelor of Fine Arts completed in 2019.

Jenny Jiang Jenny Jiang (b. 2002, Hunan Province, China) works primarily in performance art, video, and interactive installations, exploring embodied experiences within institutional structures. Her practice investigates social issues and the contemporary female experience, materializing the often-invisible mechanics of power through the dynamic interplay between the body and interactive systems.

By engaging audiences in participatory and immersive ways, Jiang transforms abstract social dynamics into tangible, visceral encounters. She lives in Shenzhen and recently earned her Master of Fine Arts in Creative Media from City University of Hong Kong.

Louise Wan Louise Wan (b. 2003, Hong Kong) works with sculpture and mixed-media installations to investigate the intersections of labour, automation, and capitalism. Her kinetic works reveal the paradoxes of labour—the invisibility and necessity of human effort, the diminishing physicality of work in an age of mechanization—while enacting systems caught in endless loops of gesture, sound, and motion.

Through controlled chaos and mechanical precision, Wan explores how bodies and machines intertwine, questioning whether automation truly liberates or merely redistributes labour’s burdens. Her practice reflects on how value, care, and exhaustion are encoded into the objects and systems around us, highlighting tensions between desire and depletion, intimacy and estrangement. Wan recently received her Master of Arts in Sculpture from the Royal College of Art, following a Bachelor of Fine Art from Central Saint Martins.

Monica Lam Monica Lam (b. 2002, Hong Kong) is a multidisciplinary artist working in sculpture, mixed media, and performance art. Her practice explores personal experiences, relationships, and the emotional landscapes they generate. In recent years, Lam has focused on the intricacies of intimate connections, using performance to evoke deep resonance through prolonged and repetitive actions.

Unbound by any single medium, she investigates complex and abstract feelings from multiple perspectives, creating works that reflect personal growth while bridging connections with audiences. Lam recently received her Bachelor of Arts from the Academy of Visual Arts at Hong Kong Baptist University.

Jonathan Kan (b. 1997, Hong Kong) is an experimental animation filmmaker and visual artist whose practice navigates the porous boundaries between animation and new media. Using time-based media, he explores ephemerality and memory, abstracting context into layers of feeling that invite viewers to engage through presence rather than narrative.

His work employs rhythm, repetition, and textured frames to convey fragmented experiences and nuanced bodily perception. Kan’s MFA graduation short film Squint Your Eyes to Get a Better Picture (2025), a frame-by-frame charcoal animation, has been screened internationally in Hong Kong, Berlin, London, and Iceland. He holds a BA in Animation from the University of the Arts London (2019) and a Master’s in Creative Media from the School of Creative Media, City University of Hong Kong.

Vera (Yuen Lok Yiu) Yuen Lok Yiu, Vera (b. 2003, Hong Kong) is an artist exploring the human psyche and the spiritual experiences that reside within individuals. She works primarily in drawing, using the layering of materials to translate inner sensations into physical form. Rather than emphasizing technical mastery, Vera focuses on the interplay between intuitive, bodily action and the impulses of the mind, allowing abstract results to emerge naturally from the flow of energy.

Her practice seeks to communicate experiences beyond verbal language, bridging the inner depths of psychological events while emphasizing universal human connectedness and instinctual expression. She recently received her Bachelor of Fine Arts from The Chinese University of Hong Kong.

Hugh Cheng (b. 2002, Hong Kong) works across ceramics, sculpture, and installation, exploring diverse production methods and materials while integrating their inherent properties and contextual significance. Drawing inspiration from minimal aesthetics and Japanese philosophy, his creations embody refined simplicity, balancing conceptual rigor with subtle beauty.

Cheng reimagines the relationship between art, space, and viewer, producing thought-provoking works that invite intellectual and emotional engagement. His ceramic sculpture, inspired by Walter de Maria, resembles a clock with a pendulum swinging to the rhythm of a heartbeat, exploring themes of presence and time and encouraging viewers to synchronize their own breathing with its oscillation. He recently received his Bachelor of Arts from the Academy of Visual Arts at Hong Kong Baptist University.

Jocelyn Tsui (b. 2002, Hong Kong) is an artist and printmaker whose work navigates the tension between structure and entropy. Inspired by architecture, mathematics, and algorithmic design, her practice is rooted in precision, repetition, and sequencing, often exploring grids and patterns across print, installation, sculpture, artist books, and video. Through these layered approaches, Tsui transforms rigid frameworks into riddle-like abstractions that reveal the natural disorder inherent in human experience. Reflecting on her upbringing in the densely populated city of Hong Kong, she captures both the pressures of proximity and the messy beauty of humanness.

Tsui recently received her Bachelor of Fine Arts from Parsons School of Design, New York, and will pursue an MFA in Painting/Printmaking at Yale School of Art. She has participated in residencies at Kala Art Institute, In Cahoots Press, and Directangle Press, and exhibited at venues including The National Arts Club, NY (2024), A.I.R. Gallery, NY (2025), and Athens Printmaking Art Center, GR (2025).

Time of Transition as Material

Most of the works are graduation projects, born from six months of deep experimentation, discussion, and introspection. The artists “squeeze out” their anxieties, doubts, and yearning for belonging through matter and form.

Their art is not merely a response but a way to feel oneself in the world. The gallery space becomes a zone where anxiety gains texture, and the artist transforms from creator to delicate editor of emotion.

In Hong Kong — where borders and censorship, migration and memory intertwine with daily life — a graduate exhibition takes on a political dimension. When young artists, silent witnesses of their era, are given a platform, art becomes more than ornamentation; it becomes a meeting point between the personal and the collective.

HKFOREWORD25 doesn’t simply introduce new names. It reminds us that home is not merely a geographic place but a state of spirit — constantly redefined and reimagined through the act of creation.