Wayfarer of Fire in Hong Kong runs through November 14: Ellen Pau’s video, Samson Young’s muted choir and a marble page

Wayfarer of Fire, a group exhibition at Kiang Malingue in Wan Chai, Hong Kong, continues through November 14. It features Brook Hsu, Kwan Sheung Chi, Lai Chih-Sheng, Phillip Lai, Ellen Pau, Apichatpong Weerasethakul and Samson Young. Cinema, sound and labour connect works in which fire appears as an image, a burned material or light. The works span 1989–1990 to 2026. Different media preserve movement and memory; the exhibition dates are distinct from their dates of creation.

Video light and a rotating beacon: fire becomes material

Ellen Pau’s Blue (1989–1990) is an eight-minute, single-channel colour video with sound, shot on Video 8 and edited with Betamax, with music by Meredith Monk. The recombination of footage and dance lets memory emerge through editing rather than continuous narrative. Apichatpong’s Fireworks (Fans) (2016) is an 8-minute-43-second looping HD video. In the photograph, flames and a fan form a luminous round mass against darkness. Both concern light, while taking looking from analogue video to digital imagery.

Phillip Lai’s Untitled (Hypnos) (2023) combines a rotating beacon, incinerated breakfast cereal, aluminium, epoxy resin and electronics, measuring 164.5 × 115.2 × 22.8 cm. In the photograph, a rough dark mass surrounds the light source, while a metal panel behind it scatters light towards the wall. A lamp normally used to demand attention enters a context of hypnosis. Comparing traces of burning with the continually rotating light distinguishes what has already happened from a mechanism still operating.

Running and a choir without sung sound: reconsidering bodily movement

Kwan Sheung Chi’s Before the End: Les Quatre Cents Coups (1959) (2017), lasting 4 minutes 36 seconds, restages the run towards the sea at the end of Truffaut’s film. Here, the artist’s then four-year-old son races his father along Hung Hom’s waterfront carrying an orange flag. The original film dates to 1959; Kwan’s artwork dates to 2017. In the photograph, the largely monochrome image makes the flag a striking colour field. The body keeps running, while setting, generation and the reason for movement have shifted.

Samson Young’s Muted Situation #21 (2017), performed by the Kwan Sing Choir, combines a 5-minute-26-second video with an eight-channel sound installation. Asked to perform We Are the World without emitting sung sound, the choir retains the bodily actions of singing on screen. This does not mean the gallery is entirely silent: eight-channel sound remains part of the work’s specifications. The wooden seats in the installation photograph also point to listening positions and the way bodies sit down, beyond simply playing a familiar song.

A small portrait, a stone page and visiting Wan Chai

Brook Hsu’s Odetta (2026), ink and pencil on linen measuring just 14 × 20.3 cm, brings a cinematic character into a small red-and-pale painted face. Lai Chih-Sheng’s A page (2026) is a hand-polished marble sheet measuring 44.8 × 34 × 0.5 cm. Its white paper-like surface retains stone’s hardness and thickness. Moving from flickering images to a still material, the exhibition extends the question of what remains after fire into making, preservation and everyday tools.

The exhibition runs September 11–November 14, 2026, at 10 Sik On Street, Wan Chai, Hong Kong. Official Hong Kong gallery hours are Tuesday–Saturday, 12:00–18:00; telephone +852 2810 0317. The official exhibition page lists the complete works and specifications. Allow more time than a quick look at photographs if you want to watch the videos in full. Reading across media reveals different physical and temporal forms within the same subject of fire.