Hong Kong art and cultural scene is home to many women artists, from actresses, singers, photographers, painters or multimedia artists. And, fortunately, this is in perpetual evolution, like in the rest of the world.

On the occasion of the International Women’s Day on 8 March, we wanted to shed a particular light on some Hong Kong inspiring women artists from different generations, background and medium of expression.

HOLLY LEE

Holly Lee and Lee Ka-Sing, 1995

Born in 1953 in Hong Kong, Holly Lee is one of the pioneers of conceptual photography in Hong Kong, experimenting with Photoshop to create composite photographs reminiscent of Renaissance oil paintings. She is best known for her portraits project, the Hollian Thesaurus, consisting of twelve portraits created between 1994 and 2000, exploring the period of change leading up to the handover of Hong Kong in 1997. Lee explored themes of East and West cultural dialogues and identities, juxtaposing historical and contemporary elements.

Using digital manipulation, Lee combined photographs, sourced imagery and 19th-century export painting from Guangdong to create her portraits series, adding fine lines to mimic the cracks in old oil paintings.

Her most recognised portrait, The Great Pageant Show, represents a Miss Hong Kong beauty pageant winner in the style of Queen Elizabeth II set in front of a Qing court painting. It is exhibited at M+ Museum.

Holly Lee, The Great Pageant Show, circa 1997

ELLEN PAU

Ellen Pau

Born in 1961 in Hong Kong, Ellen Pau is a multimedia artist, curator, researcher and a key figure of the local art scene. Graduated from Hong Kong Polytechnic University with a diploma in Diagnostic Radiography in 1982, Pau has worked as a radiographer in Queen Mary Hospital ever since. 

Inspired by 1960s filmmakers and artists such as Jean-Luc Godard and Martha Rosler, Pau created her first super-8 film Glove in 1984. In the early 1990s, she began to create video installations, such as Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore in collaboration with Chan Pik Yu and Jesse Dai. Recycling Cinema (1998) was exhibited at the Hong Kong Pavilion in the 49th Venice Biennale in 2001, and in Art and China after 1989: Theater of the World at the Guggenheim Museum (2017).

Pau has been a vocal supporter of the independent local art scene, advocating for funding increase, promotion and more exhibition opportunities for artists. In 1986, with Wong Chi-fai, May Fung, and Comyn Mo, she founded Videotage, Hong Kong’s oldest video and media art space. In 1996, she founded Microwave International New Media Arts Festival, including exhibitions, conferences, seminars, school tours and workshops. From 2013 to 2019, she was representative of the arts sector in Film Arts at the Hong Kong Arts Development Council (HKADC). In 2014, she served on the interim acquisition committee of M+ in West Kowloon Cultural District, advising on the collection development.

Ellen Pau, 2018

WONG SZE WAI

Wong Sze Wai

Born in Hong Kong in 1990, Wong Sze Wai graduated from The Chinese University of Hong Kong with a Bachelor of Fine Arts in 2013 and a Master of Fine Arts in 2020. She participated in an artist residency in Bulgaria in 2018. She is currently teaching at the Fine Art Department of The Chinese University of Hong Kong.

Her artworks focus on the relationship between memory and imagination. They highlight the loss of memories and represent the process of recollection in a way of inscription and erasure. She is fascinated by ruin for its metaphorical representation of lost and concealed memories.

From her experience of visiting ruins, wondering about ruins is much like recalling memories, imagining the history of ruins, just like imagining our own memories.

Wong Sze Wai, The Missing Operator, 2021

MOVANA CHEN

Movana Chen

Born in 1975 in China, Movana Chen is a Hong Kong-based artist who studied at the London College of Fashion and received a Bachelor of Fine Arts from the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology University in Hong Kong.

Since 2004, she has been weaving people’s stories through KNITerature – a genre that involves the deconstruction and reconstruction of meanings and content by knitting books. Her work is a multi-disciplinary fusion of media, performance, installation and sculpture which has been presented at different exhibitions, art festivals and events globally, from Hong Kong to London, Paris, Venice, Rotterdam, Beijing, Singapore, Seoul, Istanbul to Siberia, etc.

Her works have been collected by the Hong Kong Heritage Museum, Louis Vuitton, Cathay Pacific and private collectors globally.

Her monumental installation Knitting Conversations (2013) is currently exhibited at M+ Museum, reflecting on female labour, personal and shared memories, material transformation, and time.

Installation of Movana Chen: Knitting Conversations, M+, 2024

FATINA KONG

Fatina Kong

Born in China in 1982, Fatina Kong graduated from the Academy of Visual Art, Hong Kong Baptist University in 2015. Her style of work has been exploring the combination of Chinese painting and Western media.

Although growing up in Hong Kong, she received mostly Western art training. In 2018, she visited Xining, China, to study Buddha painting thangka, and stayed in Japan for one month for an artist residency program. She realised that due to differences in language, beliefs, and lifestyle, these experiences make traditional Eastern paintings have a completely different composition, brush strokes, and feelings.

She is using the recordings and images from daily life to form a landscape that combines memories and fantasy. She combines ink, acrylic, Chinese pigments on silk as painting media, and the emptiness in painting achieves traditional Chinese aesthetic.

Fatina Kong, Rosy shades transience, 2023

LITTLE THUNDER

Little Thunder

Born in 1984 in Hong Kong, Little Thunder (Cheng Sum-ling) is a popular self-taught cartoonist. Influenced by her father, an ink painter, she started painting at a very early age. In 2001, at only 17, she was awarded the Best New Artist at the China Japan Comics Exchange.

In 2006, she published her first manga and art book and began drawing the trilogy KYLOOE. The trilogy was completed and published in 2012. Since then, it has been translated into Chinese, French and Italian.

Her works are heavily influenced by manga aesthetics where humanity is depicted in a series of magical realist circumstances and interactions. Brightly colored and cartoonish, the images invoke another type of reality where the fantastical, the cognitive, and the visceral all take their own forms to communicate on another plane of existence.

Little Thunder, Reality Dropout