Ka Yan So

春天不會再來 There is no longer spring I am very grateful to share that my first exhibition of 2026, 春天不會再來 There is no longer spring, opens next Wednesday (21 Jan) 6-8pm at @trocaderoprojects ! :) 春天不會再來 There is no longer spring Ka Yan So and Lex 21 Jan - 22 Feb 2026 (Thur - Sun) Opening reception: 21 Jan (Wed), 6-8pm Trocadero Projects 40 Leeds St, Floor 1, Footscray VIC 3011 Australia There Is No Longer Spring is a dual exhibition by artist Ka Yan So and her partner Lex, reflecting on an intimate relationship formed and sustained under shifting socio-political conditions in Hong Kong. Built upon experiences of judgement, confinement, suspension, uprooting, and growth, the exhibition traces how personal bonds endure amid precarity. Bringing together works created between 2021 and 2025, the exhibition follows a gradual transformation in how the relationship between the individual and society is understood—from adolescence into adulthood. Through drawing, interactive digital work, text, and sculpture, waves of conflicting emotions surface and gently interrogate melancholic inertia within affective reflection. Vulnerable yet deliberate, the exhibition gestures against deindividualisation and collective paralysis, as an attempt to imagine the future of a homeland, however softly, another way forward. We would love to see you there 🤍 春天不會再來 There Is No Longer Spring is part of Trocadero Projects’ 2024-25 creative program.

Second part of Evaporated Love (2024) Aluminium, wool, water, mother made bracelet and graphite on paper Dimensions variable The softest part that I cannot share with you— papa The sixth image taken by @juliette_claire_art , thank you Juliette :)

《三十分鐘》 零度的香港冬天，又濕又凍，彩虹那個等候前往壁屋的小巴的位置特別食風，胃內空空，勉強記得今早嘔吐過，好像還能見到食物原型，至於早餐吃過什麼，已經忘了。都是新藥的錯，我想。我記得的事情越來越少，像是逐漸萎縮成一尾金魚，但卻記得我送他的最後一程。我説要等他，他説我們三個半月後去夾炸蝦尾公仔。 來來回回數算袋子裏的東西，多番確認自己沒有帶漏。我在小巴上把袋子抱得很緊，祈禱着：今天懲教署可以仁慈一些，寬容我將擁抱一併送進去。 我很早就忘記被點名的緊張感，或者我從來不在乎，至少在讀書的時候。不過他們讀他的號碼時，心臟有劇烈的震動，然後我第二百零七次撥弄自己的頭髮，扯扯嘴角，我們進去，三十分鐘就開始倒計時了。三十分鐘有多長？以往在口試中要説滿三分鐘足以叫我抓狂，但這三十分鐘顯得彌足珍貴。我説，我很想你，我今次帶了朱古力比你，還有hand cream和牙刷……沒有説，我昨天走遍了整個區的超市找指定的品牌和款式，好怕買不齊東西；也沒有説，我很對不起你，讓你獨自一個孤單地過冬天；我只能在心裏懺悔，那天他入獄前我甚至只擁抱了他五秒，而他的背影那樣單薄，像要在風中消散化無。三十分鐘完的時候，我看見他眼睛裏的光猛地搖晃，幾乎熄滅。我們狼狽地道別，又回到下一個等待的輪迴。 我的日子在藥和37克的M&M朱古力中周旋，生活失去了甜和苦以外的一切味蕾，而且後者居多。 我偶爾也會看見自己的貓嘔吐，尤其是換毛的季節。我也是換毛的貓吧，理順自己，努力吃藥，瘋狂嘔吐。我想貓自己是知道嘔吐後就會好起來的，我也曾經這樣盼望着，渡過了三個半月。 - 以上文字都係朋友季五幫我寫的，好多謝佢願意聽我呢個故事。終於完結啦，當中嘅痛就好似有又好似冇完結到。上星期醫生問我，算唔算終於可以放低將呢件事？可能因為食太多藥，我已經對所有感覺麻木左，可能我可以做得更好，用情感澎湃嘅方式去表現呢件事，instead of 行冷冰冰呢條路線，咁就觀眾同我都可以更好地消化到呢份情感。 本來呢份作品個名叫 “You Would Never Understand My Pain”，但我怕大家睇到份作品名就會先入為主，所以就改得含羞啲。不過我自己係比較鍾意呢個名，因為的確當時嘅我推開晒身邊最親近嘅人，覺得好痛苦、冇人明白我。大家繼續嘻嘻哈哈過聖誕、食黃店行市集、上莊拍拖，唯獨我自己一個面對海嘯。不過anyway，希望仲有一日我可以化解心入邊呢條刺。 多謝睇到呢度嘅大家！終於完結！

30 Minutes (2021) Mixed powder of Lyrica, Pristiq, Lexapro, Brintellix, Sertraline and Wellbutrin xl on daily accessories Precious text by 季五, English translation by Sin Tung Liu (Cheryl) Exhibited at Trocadero Projects, 2026 Photo: Chris Siu (thank you @csiuuu !!) 2021 is a monumental year. I was diagnosed with severe depression and tried countless medications. I struggled every day with vomiting, diarrhoea, and poor memory, but I still remember the two chances of 30 minutes to visit him each month.

I’m grateful to share that my self-published artist book, Where do the stars land, one of its limited copies has found a thoughtful home in the hands of @onewonkyboy .🤍 Thank you, Alec, for reading the book with such care and spending time with each work in the exhibition. Your warmth reminds me of the passion that kept me writing 24/7 in a single month, and how much love, insight, and generosity I received from my participants, which is why I wanted so deeply to share their stories through my words. 🩶 This book is neither a catalogue nor a thesis, but a slow gathering—an archive of observations, friendships, and moments stitched together across months of care, conversation, and creation, throughout my participatory art project. Bringing together 13 participants with East and Southeast Asian backgrounds—now living, settling, or resettled in Australia—this book traces how cultural heritage, family relationships and experiences of relocation shape our gesture of love, sense of ‘home’, identities and preservation of memory. Each chapter intimately observing each participant’s art practice, life experiences, and the way they respond to the project. These observations are framed through my perspectives as both a friend, an artist, a curator and a fellow traveller navigating displacement together. Ultimately, Where do the stars land is a temporal but soft landing: a shared space of storytelling that honours the quiet, complex beauty of life. ✨⭐️🌟💫 22,540 words in both English & Traditional Chinese. 180 pages. This book could not exist without my partner Ka Chun, my family members, and all of my participants. Thank you endlessly. You can now read the full book online via the link in my bio, or flip through a physical copy at Drum Theatre as part of the HOME25: Invisible Cities exhibition. If you‘re interested in collecting a copy, feel free to DM me. ☀️

HOME25: Invisible Cities Exhibition @artsgreaterdandy Where do the stars land 2025- Mixed media, dimensions variable Featured collaborators: ALEX (Alex Danay); Ariene Lam; Celline Mercado; Heidi Kwong; Jessica Guo; Ji Li; Joanna Richard; Judy Kong; Lê Nguyên Phương; Sin Tung Liu (Cheryl); Woo Hyun Kang; Ka Chun Lam; Max Poon. “Ka Yan So’s new, collaborative installation explores the intimate rituals and gestures that shape our sense of ‘home’, particularly within diasporic and multilingual communities. Developed with thirteen collaborators from East and Southeast Asian backgrounds, the work gathers stories, images, handwritten scripts, and symbolic materials to reflect on migration, memory and the evolving meanings of ‘home’. Developed through a series of intimate community gatherings, shared meals, and conversations with collaborators from diverse diasporic backgrounds, the project brings together personal responses to questions such as “What is ‘home’ to you?” and “What would you take with you if you had to leave?” These responses—expressed through text, photography, drawing, sculpture, and found objects—form an immersive environment that is both domestic and collective, constantly shifting through audience interaction. The installation blends carefully arranged everyday materials with hand-written question cards, textiles and collaborative contributions, inviting visitors not just to observe but to participate, respond, and reflect. Ka Yan’s quiet gestures of care—attentively listening to, documenting, and interpreting her collaborators’ stories behind their works—manifest in an artist book and the spatial installation. She foregrounds the emotional weight of displacement, the complexity of family bonds, and the multiplicity of cultural identity. Rather than offering fixed answers, Where do the stars land honors the diverse, often fragmented experiences that form diasporic life, offering a tender space for belonging. “ ✍️: @miriamlarosa Special thanks to the kindest Miriam @miriamlarosa and Kyla @sqyyes for putting so much effort and making this big project happen at a public space as part of the HOME25 exhibition! 💞

Our wings, our nest, her tears 不會哭的孩子有奶吃 No milk for the crying baby (2025) Guanyin soil (Kaolin clay), dust, sand, water, ashes from incense, wool, found object, graphite on paper Dimensions variable 蘇嘉茵的裝置作品《不會哭的孩子有奶吃》顛覆了「會哭的孩子有奶吃」這句諺語。作品源自其母親更年期的身體疼痛經歷，從女兒的視角揭示了母職堅強表象下的脆弱——這份忍耐在華人文化中往往是無意識地承繼，尤其體現在她母親的家鄉福建。作品透過觀音菩薩慈悲的象徵，以香灰、陶土與手寫文字等素材承載這些重量。跨過對女性身份的觀察，她以自傳式創作手法，探討在香港兩代移⺠經歷中的家庭創傷承繼。她的繪畫與攝影作品揭示「反哺」的現象——女兒反過來成為母親的母親。這是一種不尋常但深切的跨代關愛，源於上一代勞苦與犧牲的生命歷程中，對自己與下一代無條件的愛之缺席。空間裡柔軟的羊毛、鏽蝕的鐵線與散落如淚水與石塊般的陶土，像是對這些無可挽回、被長久壓抑的痛苦的一種安靜回應——一份說不出口的致意，一份遲來的溫柔。 Ka Yan So’s installation work No milk for the crying baby (2025) subverts the saying ‘The squeaky wheel gets the grease’. She draws on her mother’s experience of menopause to explore maternal sacrifice and intergenerational pain. Incorporating sculpture, drawing, photography, and ritual materials like incense ash and clay, So reflects on the reversal of caregiving roles between mother and daughter. Symbolically invoking Guanyin—the bodhisattva of compassion—her installation speaks to inherited endurance, the silence of filial devotion, and the quiet grief of care. Material contrasts between soft wool, rusted metal, and teardrop-shaped clay elements underscore a gesture of care towards fragility that passed down through generations of migration and loss. - 過渡之地 Soul Crossings in the Liminal Space 展覽日期 Exhibition Period ：5 June - 21 June 2025 開放時間 Opening Hours: 11am-7pm（逢星期一休息 Closed on Mondays) 地點 Venue: 1a空間（香港九龍土瓜灣馬頭角道63號牛棚藝術村14號室） 1a space, Unit 14, Cattle Depot Artist Village, 63 Ma Tau Kok Road, To Kwa Wan 藝術家分享 Artist Tour: 8 June 2025 （Sunday） 3pm - 4pm 夥伴 Partner: 1a 空間 1a space 資助 Supported by：香港藝術發展局 Hong Kong Arts Development Council 香港藝術發展局支持藝術表達自由，本計劃內容並不反映本局意見。 Hong Kong Arts Development Council supports freedom of artistic expression. The views and opinions expressed in this project do not represent the stand of the Council.

不會哭的孩子有奶吃 No milk for the crying baby (2025) Guanyin soil (Kaolin clay), dust, sand, water, ashes from incense, wool, found object, graphite on paper Dimensions variable 我多麼渴望當你的媽媽 那我就可以在你懷我的時候 煲雞湯給你喝 弄熱水給你浸腳 牽着你的手走回家的那段斜路 告訴你 你是被愛的小孩 你不一定要當媽媽 不一定要養活所有人 那我就可以為你擋下如此苦的路 - 過渡之地 Soul Crossings in the Liminal Space 展覽日期 Exhibition Period ：5 June - 21 June 2025 開放時間 Opening Hours: 11am-7pm（逢星期一休息 Closed on Mondays) 地點 Venue: 1a空間（香港九龍土瓜灣馬頭角道63號牛棚藝術村14號室） 1a space, Unit 14, Cattle Depot Artist Village, 63 Ma Tau Kok Road, To Kwa Wan 藝術家分享 Artist Tour: 8 June 2025 （Sunday） 3pm - 4pm 夥伴 Partner: 1a 空間 1a space 資助 Supported by：香港藝術發展局 Hong Kong Arts Development Council 香港藝術發展局支持藝術表達自由，本計劃內容並不反映本局意見。 Hong Kong Arts Development Council supports freedom of artistic expression. The views and opinions expressed in this project do not represent the stand of the Council.

I’m thrilled to share that my participatory project, Where do the stars land (2025–), will be featured in HOME25: Invisible Cities presented by @artsgreaterdandy , showing across different spots in the centre of Dandenong. 🏠 HOME25: Invisible Cities Exhibition 25 June – 27 September 2025 🕙 10am – 4pm (Closed Sundays) 📍 Drum Theatre, 226 Lonsdale St, Dandenong VIC 3175 🤍 Opening Reception: 21 June 2pm – 7pm (We’ll gather there at 5pm!) This work invites both project-based participation and spontaneous public interaction. It also marks the debut of my artist book Where do the stars land, unfolding in the public space of Drum Theatre, Dandenong. Terms like “diaspora” might capture our journeys of settling in new lands, but beyond the labels, what truly matters is how we perceive, process, and respond to change. For this project, I gathered 13 artists and non-artists rooted in East and Southeast Asian heritages, now re-planted in Australia’s shifting soil. Together, we created artworks and shared ideas, warm meals, and laughter over many months—forming a community. My stars (collaborators): ALEX [@alexdanay ] , Ariene Lam [@my.little.project.nn ], Celline Mercado [@gacelline ], Heidi Kwong [@dearest_clay ], Jessica Guo [@jg_art_ ], Ji Li [@jili_1012 ], Joanna Richard, Judy Kong [@judy.kong ], Ka Chun Lam, Lê Nguyên Phương [@phuong.io ], Max Poon, Sin Tung Liu (Cheryl) [@sixof.cups ], and Woo Hyun Kang [@woou_www ]. These stars reflect on the complexities of familial love, memory, belonging, place histories, and cultural inheritance—guided by my 41 handmade questions about home, identity, migration, and displacement. Alongside their responses, you’ll find my book documenting our community interactions, my observations on their stories of resettlement, and how these journeys lead to their artworks. Together, their works and my words create a constellation of voices gently revealing what it really means to find—or lose—home amid resettlement. Set within Dandenong, a ‘home’ to many migrants, this site-specific project traces how our shifting experiences reshape identity and, perhaps, slowly guide us towards a new ‘landing’. Hope to see you there:) ⭐️

不會哭的孩子有奶吃 No milk for the crying baby (2025) Guanyin soil (Kaolin clay), dust, sand, water, ashes from incense, steel, wool, found object, graphite on paper Dimensions variable - My mother has been suffering from menopause since the year I began settling in Australia. Some days, her fingers and feet clench in pain until she can hardly move; other days, a heat rises in her chest like fire. But this pain is never new—it’s only now becoming visible. No one, not even she, knows how far she has walked since leaving her family and hometown in China, to resettle in Hong Kong with my father. No one knows how many tears remain trapped in her body, swallowed silently—from her eyes to her throat, down into her stomach— until the day she stops bleeding. She reminds me of Guanyin, the bodhisattva of compassion, who listens and saves those in suffering. In her hometown of Fujian, Guanyin is deeply worshipped by many women, including my mother—especially after she lost her own mother during migration. Always giving, always enduring, like Guanyin, I wonder if it is a way of reaching for the love she once needed from her mother. And now, I find myself trying to absorb everything she carries into my own body—to soothe it, to walk the rest of the path on her behalf, as if to mother my mother in return. 自我在澳洲落地的那一年起，母親便開始飽受更年期之苦。 有些日子，她的手心和腳底突然痛得幾乎無法移動；有些時候，一股灼熱之氣從胸口湧現，如火燒般難以承受。但這份痛楚並非一朝一夕形成——只是直到如今，才慢慢浮現於表面。從未有人，包括她自己，知曉她自離開家鄉與親人、並與她曾經的伴侶遷居香港建立家庭後，究竟走過了多遠、多久的路。亦未聞有多少眼淚困在她體內，悄然吞下——從眼中、喉間一路滾落至腹中——直到那一天，她的血不再流。 她讓我想起觀音，那位傾聽眾生苦難，投入苦海施以救渡，慈悲的菩薩。在她的故鄉福建，觀音是許多女性虔誠信仰的對象，包括我母親——特別是在她遷徙途中失去母親之後。她總是習慣忍耐、把她認為最好的一切給予所有人，宛如觀音。我不禁思索，這是否是她潛意識裡試圖填補對母愛渴望的方式。 而如今，我也開始試圖將她的一切吸納進自己的身體裡，撫平，渴望代她繼續走剩下的路，彷如成為她的母親。 Image 6 and 8 credit: CaroL. Y. T

展覽 「過渡之地 Soul Crossings in the Liminal Space」即將於 2025 年 6 月在香港 1a 空間呈獻 @1a_space ！ 本展覽展示四位藝術家的作品——廖倩彤 @sixof.cups 江曉霖 @judy.kong 、蘇嘉茵 @blueclvb 及楊晨威 @wise_ceramics ，由梁靜 @jing.archive 策展。 四位藝術家以裝置、影像、聲音等多元媒介，回應在他鄉生活中交織的記憶、歸屬、日常與遷徙經驗。展覽圍繞「在場」與「缺席」、「個人」與「集體」之間的張力，呈現一種文化與情感上的中間狀態。所謂「過渡之地」，是一個懸浮的空間，不完全屬於過去，也不完全屬於當下。四位藝術家透過觀察、重構與感知，呈現那些未被記錄但深植內心的體驗：或是親密記憶的殘影，或是日常動作中的轉化，或是遷徙之路上的靜默重量。 藝術家分享將於6月8日(星期日）下午三時舉行 (以廣東話進行)，登記連結在bio。 - We are very excited to share our upcoming exhibition 「過渡之地 Soul Crossings in the Liminal Space」, opening this June at 1a space in Hong Kong! @1a_space Featuring works by four artists —— Liu Sin Tung (Cheryl) @sixof.cups , Judy Kong @judy.kong , Ka Yan So @blueclvb , and Yeung Sun Wai Wise @wise_ceramics , curated by Liang Jing @jing.archive . In this exhibition, four artists raised in Hong Kong and now living in Melbourne come together to explore the layered experiences of belonging, the everyday, displacement, and memory. Through diverse installation practices, they navigate the tensions between absence and presence, personal and cultural narratives, and the overarching state of in-betweenness. The artist tour will take place on June 8 (Sunday) at 3pm (conducted in Cantonese). Registration link in bio. - 開幕 Opening Reception ：7 June 2025 (Saturday) 3pm - 6pm 展覽日期 Exhibition Period ：5 June - 21 June 2025 開放時間 Opening Hours： 11am-7pm（逢星期一休息 Closed on Mondays） 地點 Venue：1a空間 (香港九龍土瓜灣馬頭角道63號牛棚藝術村14號室) 1a space, Unit 14, Cattle Depot Artist Village, 63 Ma Tau Kok Road, To Kwa Wan 藝術家分享 Artist Tour：8 June 2025 (Sunday) 3pm - 4pm 夥伴 Partner：1a空間 1a space 資助 Supported by：香港藝術發展局 Hong Kong Arts Development Council 香港藝術發展局支持藝術表達自由，本計劃內容並不反映本局意見。 Hong Kong Arts Development Council supports freedom of artistic expression. The views and opinions expressed in this project do not represent the stand of the Council.

Can’t wait to share how our home is slowly turning into a Home Studio🥹 two exhibitions coming up in June! I’m so glad my flatmate is also an installation artist 🩵 @blueclvb