HONG KONG.- Para Site is presenting The Embrace and the Passage, an unfolding exhibition of all-new commissions by Michele Chu, Florence Lam, Monique Yim, and Bunny Cadag, curated by Jessie Kwok.

The exhibition examines the complex relationship between host and guest as a framework to explore questions of intimacy and hospitality during times of transition and displacement. A host embraces, cares, and remains, while a guest arrives, adapts, and departs. In the physical or metaphorical sense—as a body, home or a place—the host-guest dynamic is marked by codependence, negotiation and sometimes conflict.

Chu assumes the role of host by designing an immersive installation that envelops the senses, intervening in the tenth-floor space at Para Site, to welcome the audience into an interactive stage for performances and happenings. Lam, Yim, and Cadag will present live works, both within and beyond the installation, reimagining the role of the guest. As the exhibition progresses, the artists will take turns occupying or activating various elements from within the installation, presenting performance-based works characterised by choreographic instruction, body movement, improvisation, audience participation and connecting the exhibition space with the outside world.

Each artist weaves their unique perspectives and lived experiences into a dialogue in exhibition-making, narrative shifts, and performance within a constantly evolving environment. Chu hosts a space for grief, a hybrid realm that is both a domestic habitat and a disorienting void. Lam’s structured improvisation using her own body explores the ambivalence between presence and absence, rooting and clearing. Meanwhile, Yim instigates personal encounters in various forms, offering a respite of stability within the inherent unpredictability and transience of our lives. Lastly, in her collaboration with migrant communities, Cadag draws connections between the experience of traversing geopolitical borders and navigating bodily boundaries.

Together, the artists mediate and adapt, demonstrating essential gestures of coexistence. Throughout the exhibition, relationships and perspectives intertwine and shift, deconstructing the “host-guest” binary, allowing new meanings to ripple through.

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.