Central Fringe Club | Lui Hoi-yan Solo Exhibition 'The Past is the Future': A Sensory Journey with 'Love' as its Core

Description

Local multi-disciplinary visual artist Lui Hoi-yan will present her solo installation exhibition, 'The Past is the Future', at the Fringe Club from 4 to 10 December 2025. This exhibition originates from a pursuit of light: when memories fade with time, how do we reshape the warmth that once existed?
 
Lui Hoi-yan is adept at exploring the liminal space between memory, loss, and transformation through immersive installation art, transforming personal narratives into emotional landscapes that resonate universally. This exhibition is supported by the Hong Kong Arts Development Council's Cultural Exchange Grant, continuing her in-depth exploration of the interwoven relationship between memory, materiality, and metaphor. Drawing from her background in fashion textiles and contemporary photography techniques, she has developed a unique artistic language and uses creation as a healing practice, presenting an emotional journey from loss to rebirth.
 
'The Past is the Future' uses the 'Sun' as its central metaphor, symbolizing the enduring and unwavering love within a family, while also revealing its duality, akin to a natural phenomenon—even the sun can be obscured by clouds and hidden in the midst of storms. This contrast reflects the fragility of human connections, prompting viewers to contemplate how the presence and absence of love shape our existence.
 
The number '11,640 hours' recurs throughout the exhibition, not as a cold quantification of time, but as a measure of emotion, silently woven into the space, bearing witness to how fleeting moments can be distilled into eternity.
 
Within a four-meter-wide circular installation of mesh fabric, warm light gently envelops the viewers, and the fabric undulates with the airflow, resembling a breathing realm of memory. Handcrafted ceramic plates carry a dual ritual: clay undergoes a transformative process from a state of unconditional pliability to a fixed form through the kiln's fire, akin to the self being forged in love; while images developed in the darkroom, like sweat stains seeping into the ceramic, become marks of existence that are both fragile and sturdy.
 
Lui Hoi-yan views photography as a metabolic process, akin to photosynthesis, transforming light into artistic entities imbued with vitality. By merging darkroom techniques with the meditative process of ceramics, she has created these vessels, embodying her core belief: clay, like the self, starts as soft and pliable but becomes irreversibly fixed after the trial of fire; and the developed surface, a rewrite of identity, is both fixed and fragile, enduring yet easily marred.
 
'The Past is the Future' is not just an exhibition but an embodied argument—that identity is not innate but continuously generated in the interweaving of love and memory. The artist invites viewers to linger within this space, sensing how light flows through the mesh, how memories solidify in clay, and how love, in the interplay of light and shadow, continually shapes every one of our 'now' moments.

Artist: Lui Hoi-yan

Curator: Yan Chi-chung

Gallery: Chan Lai-ling Gallery

Free admission