One Life One Dream series, "Realm" (蕾絲書法 —境)

This series involves interviewing Asian immigrants in Paris, asking them to choose a word that represents their life in the city. Hong Wai then transforms their private feelings into hardened voices through lace calligraphy, with each word representing a unique Parisian experience. 境 (Jìngjiè - Realm) Hong Wai folded the strokes of the characters for " 境" (Jìngjiè - Realm) into undulating mountain shapes. From a distance, the work appears as a landscape, but when viewed from above, the character 境 will emerge. The artwork allows viewers to perceive different truths depending on their visual perspective. Hong Wai’s "Lace Calligraphy Landscape Sculpture: 境 (Jìngjiè – Realm)" exemplifies a poetic negotiation between materiality and metaphor, where the artist’s signature innovation-transforming delicate lace into sculptural form-transcends the boundaries of both textile and landscape traditions. In this work, Hong Wai orchestrates the diaphanous qualities of black lace into undulating, calligraphic topographies, evoking the atmospheric depth and spatial ambiguity of classical Chinese shanshui (mountain-water) painting. The lace’s floral motifs, once associated with intimacy and adornment, are here recontextualized as the very terrain of the sublime, their translucency inviting a play of light and shadow that animates the sculpture’s surface. The piece’s title, 境 (Realm), alludes to the philosophical notion of "jingjie"-the liminal threshold between the physical and the spiritual, the seen and the imagined-thus positioning the work as a contemplative space where viewers are invited to traverse both inner and outer landscapes.

Created By

Hong Wai