Vivian Ho exhibition opens with a simple proposition: what if Hong Kong streets hid a gentle, surreal world where whale sharks swim above tenement rooftops and jellyfish drift over elevated walkways? The cityscape, in the artist’s work, becomes a stage for playful, dreamlike encounters that blend local landmarks with strange marine and land animals.
Ho brings a wide palette of visual elements to ordinary streets, using long practiced draftsmanship and a vivid imagination to build a fictional, hyperreal Hong Kong. Rather than complain about the absurdities of modern life, her work suggests, live more fantastically than the world around you.
This profile visits Ho’s studio and walks with her through busy neighborhoods, asking how she turns familiar scenes into the magical realism that defines her work.
Vivian Ho exhibition: where oil paint meets illustration
Viewers may first recognize Ho for her bright, densely detailed illustrations, but she trained as a traditional oil painter while studying in the United States, where she majored in economics and oil painting. A lifelong comics reader, she says she never set out to pursue “art” as a label, she only wanted to draw.
Her images do not aim to teach a heavy lesson or advance a formal philosophy. Instead, she mixes everyday observations and local popular culture into work that records her emotional responses to life in Hong Kong.
Studio practice and technique
Ho describes oil painting and illustration as distinct processes. “Oil paint is like farming, you spend a long time preparing the canvas and the frame, mixing colors, priming, and waiting for layers to dry,” she said. “Doodling is more like drawing whatever you want, when you want it. It feels more immediate.”
She does not place one medium above the other. “It is like drinking red wine and yogurt, both can make you happy in different ways,” she said. Heavy oil strokes show texture and weight, while illustration lets her pour out ideas more freely. Ho, who says she dislikes boredom, enjoys moving between the two modes.
Filling the frame, avoiding empty space
Ho said she has a kind of fear of blank space, so she uses dense composition to create visual impact. Her canvases feel packed; the viewer discovers new details like hidden eggs in a video game as they look closer.
Putting many elements together without losing harmony requires careful planning. Ho sketches with ink and pen in fine lines and then colors digitally. She usually decides on the main scene first, then layers characters, props, and background elements to assemble a unique image.
In a recent piece titled “I will save you, escape human absurdity” Ho set the scene in Sham Shui Po, an older neighborhood in Kowloon, and transformed its tenement buildings into a vast aquarium where whale sharks and manta rays drift between apartments. A couple holds hands and looks up, producing a dislocated but romantic feeling.
Local color and Cantonese touches
Ho records both the city’s bustle and its quiet loneliness. She often titles works with Cantonese lyrics, and she created a series based on Cantonese proverbs, which fed a localized impression of her work. How does she feel about being labeled “very local”?
She laughed and said labels are curious. “Even rejecting a label becomes a label itself. If you say I am indie, that is also a kind of anti mainstream label,” she said. She does not want her work boxed in. She hopes viewers find a sense of resonance. Born and raised here, she feels a Cantonese sentimental attachment and a belonging to the city that returns in her work, even when her pieces travel to overseas galleries.
From “Wish You Were Here” to “I miss us”
Now in her tenth year as a full time artist, Ho has collaborated with brands, media, and arts organizations, and her work is in the collection of M+, the Hong Kong museum for visual culture, she said. Last year she mounted her first gallery show of illustration titled “Wish You Were Here,” a series she described as a love letter to Hong Kong.
One year later she returns with a second illustration solo show called “I miss us,” continuing her fantastical approach while reflecting on the city’s quiet changes. “Wish You Were Here felt like talking to a long distance partner, like I miss you and I want you to see what I see,” she said. “This time, ‘I miss us’ feels like a breakup where one person cannot let go or will not admit it is over.”
She is showing 22 new works that guide viewers back to familiar streets and scattered memories. The city changes, and that instability can feel like a relationship gone wrong, she said, but painting preserves the sweetness of those memories.
She said the previous show aimed to convey loneliness, while this one aims to render the sweetness found in memory. “When I paint I let go, I paint as fantastical as the everyday allows,” she said. Even if emotions no longer align, that does not stop her from longing for a relationship or for the city itself.
Imagined futures and small acts of calm
Asked about the future, she said the way she composes scenes is a kind of hope. “I think ‘I want you’ and ‘I miss you’ are different, and ‘I miss you’ and ‘I miss us’ are different too. The treatment on the canvas is how I imagine the future, often with starry elements and bright colors,” she said. Even amid strange events in a painting, there is often one or two people calmly going about their business.
“Even if the world feels odd, even if the universe is strange, there is a feeling of let’s keep going,” she said. Her work invites viewers to take comfort in ordinary resilience as much as in flights of imagination.
In “ET Phone Home,” an alien girl steps into a street phone booth carrying a stack of coins, hoping to call a distant planet. Ho asked whether we are the aliens here or whether this place is our true home.
In “Home is where the heart is,” a giant jellyfish drifts over an elevated pedestrian bridge while a girl conducts them home with a baton. Ho said she once thought jellyfish never swam intentionally but only drifted. As you look, she asks, are you the guide or the drifting creature?
Viewers find many interpretations in her paintings. Some see a whimsical alternate world, some feel the sweetness of memory, and others read a political subtext. Ho said she prefers open space for imagination. “I like space and imagination. I do not want to declare one fixed meaning. I make work because I have feelings to record in the moment,” she said.
Longing is both a feeling and an attitude. When the everyday is already fantastical, Ho suggests, there is less need to cling to past beauty. Instead, use imagination to create an endlessly replenishing ocean.
“I miss us” exhibition
Dates: On view through Jan. 12, 2023
Hours: 11 a.m. to 8 p.m. daily, with special hours on Dec. 24 and Dec. 31 from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m.
Location: SHOUT Art Hub & Gallery, shop OT308A, Harbour City, Tsim Sha Tsui (a waterfront shopping district in Kowloon)
Executive Producer: Angus Mok
Producer: Mimi Kong
Editor: Ruby Yiu
Videographers: Kason Tam, Alvin Kong, Andy Lee
Photographer: Kit Chu
Video Editor: Andy Lee
Designer: Michael Choi
Special thanks: Vivian Ho
