Gay cruising hotspot or sacred Hong Kong wishing tree? It is both in this art exhibition by Trevor Yeung
- Trevor Yeung, one of Hong Kong’s most visible artists, has an exhibition at Para Site that links a London gay cruising hotspot to the Lam Tseun Wishing Tree
- A study of historic rituals that communities use to overcome loneliness, fear and self-doubt, the result is spellbinding and immersive
Trevor Yeung’s “Soft Breath” exhibition at Para Site’s small annex space in Hong Kong has set a high bar for this week’s opening of his solo show at the Venice Biennale in Italy.
We have seen how his practice developed from the pet fish and pot plants he kept in his youth into a coded visual system that uses nature as a metaphor for man-made, closed systems with their own rules and power dynamics, often self-referential in terms of addressing his private fears while trying to link those to more universal experiences.
(The pandemic gave him the chance to experiment with actually making art inside an artificial, doubly closed system – quarantine hotels and an isolated Hong Kong.)
But now, with “Soft Breath”, he has turned his gaze outward, studying historic rituals that different communities have established to overcome loneliness, fear and self-doubts, and the result is spellbinding.