Ellen Pau, radiographer by training and visionary by circumstance, embarked on her artistic journey in the anxious Hong Kong of the 1980s—a time when the city was bracing for its handover to China after 156 years of British colonial rule. Armed with a Super 8 camera and an unerring eye for the body’s hidden tensions, she made Glove (1984), a surreal experiment on desire. Shortly after, she cofounded Videotage, the pioneering video art collective that became a vibrant core of media art, not only in Hong Kong but across East Asia. Her works, including Drained II (1989), the tender Song of the Goddess (1992), and the hypnotic Recycling Cinema (1999–2000), unfold like riddles: an endlessly vanishing performer, gendered gestures, blurred motion capturing a city in flux. Clinical yet poetic, her practice probes the fragile negotiations of identity, laying bare complexities lurking beneath the surface. Through these pieces and her broader advocacy, Pau also championed LGBTQ+ rights in Hong Kong, carving out spaces for queer and alternative voices within a conservative cultural landscape. In May, Pau opened her first institutional solo exhibition at the SculptureCenter in New York, featuring rarely seen historical video works and reimagined installations from the ’90s—together tracing almost four decades of her inventive spirit.

Elaine W. Ng is editor and publisher of ArtAsiaPacific.