Loading Events

Closing Artist Talk for ‘The Embrace and the Passage’

Date
Feb 23, 2025
Time
6:00 pm – 7:00 pm

Venue

10B, Wing Wah Industrial Building
Quarry Bay, Hong Kong

With artists Bunny Cadag, Michele Chu, Florence Lam, Monique Yim, moderated by curator Jessie Kwok
In English
Registration required here
(Following Bunny Cadag’s performance work ‘PORTALS‘ on 23 Feb 2025)

 

As the unfolding exhibition draws to a close, the four artists gather to reflect on their works and discuss how they engage with host-guest dynamics as a framework for healing. Navigating through place-making and live happenings, they tend to personal and collective traumas. The conversation will also delve into their approaches to dialogical art-making—how exchanges shape their practices and give rise to fluid, evolving relationships. As boundaries shift and roles dissolve, the discussion considers: when boundaries are disrupted, can the guest gain power, and can the host be liberated? We invite all audiences along the way to take part in this reflection and sharing.

About the artists & curator

Michele Chu

Michele Chu in her practice explores intimacy and human connection, specifically the interplay between sensory elements and space to amplify emotional connection between individuals. Her works contemplate what makes us human, through mediums like performances, sculptures, multi-sensory installations and public interventions amongst others.

Her work has been shown at 1a Space (Hong Kong); Negative Space (Hong Kong); and Tai Kwun Contemporary (Hong Kong). Her debut solo exhibition at PHD Group, ‘you, trickling’, was featured in The New York Times, Artforum, ArtReview Asia, Frieze, Ocula, and other publications.

She is a recipient of Soundpocket’s Artist Support Program from 2020-21 and was in residence at London’s Delfina Foundation as part of their ‘Performance as Process’ program in 2023.

 

Florence Lam

Florence Lam is artist, curator, educator, with performance art as the main medium. She grew up in Hong Kong, obtained her MA Fine Art from Iceland Academy of the Arts in 2017 and her BA Fine Art from Central Saint Martins in 2014. She is the co-founder of Per.Platform, Hong Kong-based live art platform founded in 2021. Lam has performed around Asia and Europe, including M+ (Hong Kong 2023), IMPORT/EXPORT (Livorno, Italy 2023), Black Market International – Exploring 2021 (Frankfurt, Germany 2021), ZABIH Performance Festival (Lviv, Ukraine 2019), Reykjavík Arts Festival (Iceland 2018), Performance Platform Lublin (Lublin, Poland 2017) and Manifesta (Zürich, Switzerland 2016) etc. She worked as a re-performer and workshop facilitator for Marina Abramović in 2018-2019.

 

Monique Yim

Monique Yim (b.1984, Hong Kong) is an artist, educator and mental health professional as a certified hypnotherapist, gestalt counsellor, and mindfulness and expressive arts instructor. She received her MA from Central Saint Martins, University of the Arts London, UK and studied postgraduate programmes at Zurich University of the Arts, Switzerland.

Yim mainly engages in performance, photography, video, mixed media installation, participatory art, public and community art, as well as film and theatre. Her works address human conditions, including social, cultural, identity, body, gender and queer issues, as well as the experiences of marginalised minorities. Since 2006, she has been featured in over 200 exhibitions, festivals and residencies across more than 30 cities in Asia, Europe and the Americas. She has received international and local awards, including the ‘Visual Art Performance Made in Public Space Prize’ at Kassak Centre, Europe (2018), shortlist nominations for the ‘Human Rights Arts Prize’ in Hong Kong (2021) and the ‘Colours of Humanity Arts Prize’ in Hong Kong (2022 and 2023). She curated ‘Performance Art Marathon’ at the West Kowloon Cultural District in Hong Kong (2014).

Yim has served as a consultant, lecturer, workshop instructor, speaker at talks and research conferences, and professional trainer at over 100 overseas and local universities, schools, arts and cultural organisations, social services institutions, healthcare institutions, diverse arts events, and community arts projects. She is dedicated to performance art education and has pioneered interdisciplinary practices and teaching methods in performance art in Hong Kong, including cross media art, creative education, cultural and gender studies, general education, life education, mindfulness, expressive arts therapy, psychology and psychotherapy, wellbeing and healing, philosophy, and spirituality.

Yim’s practice and works have consistently been featured in the media, cited in academic texts, and selected as research or teaching materials worldwide.

 

Bunny Cadag

Bunny Cadag is an artist creating at the nexus of craft and performance; within the tensions and transitions between theatre, film as well as installation; and through the voice as a fundamental site of creative resistance and poetic reexistence. Her practice is anchored in indigenous gender diversity and contemporary gender equality, and shared through a trans approach to healing and song, alongside which she nurtures a decolonial composure toward folklore and tradition. Cadag’s performances are often participatory and community-based, amplifying voices of the marginalised while thoughtfully navigating defamiliarised shapes and spaces with compassion and generosity. In 2021, Cadag was a recipient of Para Site’s No Exit Grant for Unpaid Artistic Labour. Cadag’s work titled Munimuni was featured in ‘Myth Makers-Spectrosynthesis III’ at Tai Kwun Contemporary, Hong Kong (2022). She graduated with a Certificate in Critical Practice in Contemporary Performance at Dance Nucleus Singapore in 2023. She lives and works Nasugbu, Batangas, Philippines.

 

Jessie Kwok

Jessie Kwok is a curator based in Hong Kong and Assistant Curator at Para Site. Her curated projects include the exhibitions ‘The Embrace and the Passage’ (2024–2025) and ‘Chan Ting: Moss Wonders’ (2024), as well as a series of interpretive programmes for ‘Trevor Yeung: Soft breath’ (2024) and ‘Aki Sasamoto: Sounding Lines’ (2024). Previously, she was Assistant Curator at M+, Hong Kong’s museum of visual culture, where she co-managed the museum’s first collection catalogue, M+ Collections: Highlights (2022), and contributed to acquisitions, programming, exhibitions, and inaugural displays. Kwok graduated from the University of Sussex with a degree in Art History and Film Studies and obtained a Master’s degree cum laude in Comparative Cultural Analysis from the University of Amsterdam.