Lucille Lo Yuk-yin's forthcoming solo exhibition couldn't have come at a better time, with the city gripped by even the slightest movement of the Hang Seng Index. For after exploring social changes in the past decade, the multimedia artist concludes that Hong Kong has become preoccupied with wealth, status and glamour.
In Illusion and Reconstruction, at the Hong Kong Visual Arts Centre from next Thursday, Lo borrows Taoist concepts of illusion and the transient nature of life to highlight and satirise materialism and its superficiality.
'The exhibition talks about Hong Kong's social consciousness and development of identity,' she says.
'It focuses on society's outlook on many things: wealth, cross-cultural interaction and the changes since the handover.'
Taoism, with its focus on spontaneity, has long inspired a multitude of Chinese artists, but Lo says her artworks aren't about Taoist philosophy and she is not interested in a discussion about ancient Chinese thought.
'I play with transliteration,' she says. 'I use the word dao ['the way of things'] as a catalyst.'
