Vanity plates are the ultimate nonessential car accessory used by owners to highlight their status, wealth, humour, desires, beliefs or superstitions – and in Hong Kong they can be seen everywhere. Each plate is like a line of poetry racing through the bustling streets of the city. It is poetry in motion.
This gave me the idea to collect images of the thousands of vanity plates so they can be mixed and matched into poems. I then encouraged poets and people passionate about poetry to take part.
This project presents an exhaustive image collection of vanity plates, a gallery of poems by Hong Kong and international artists as well as a rap song made by DOUGH-BOY, and a game where you can compose and share your own Hong Kong vanity poems.
IG: hkvanit1es
The HKVANIT1ES project has been mentioned in the book “Poetry in Pedagogy Intersections Across and Between the Disciplines” Edited By Dean A. F. Gui, Jason S. Polley, and the web platform described as a good tool for educators and students to engage with poetry.
“Instagrampier” by Pierfrancesco Celada is a photographic project and final tribute to Instagram Pier, the no-longer-accessible place in Hong Kong and its Instagram account Instagrampier. I collaborated as a curator for the exhibition and Creative for the communications campaign and digital platform.
Digital Exhibition. I came up with the idea of creating a digital exhibition for the project – an online reconstruction of Instagram Pier for people to visit and experience while exploring the work of Pierfrancesco Celada from Instagrampier. www.instagrampier.com
Communication. For the launch of "Instagrampier”, we designed a visual identity inspired by and created on Instagram stories.
Curatorial Approach. Instead of showcasing a limited number of pictures from Instagrampier, I wanted to create a more unrestricted and immersive experience. I displayed over 1500 photographs in different formats, enabling viewers to understand the vastness of the project while getting a greater sense of the place and everything that happened there.
Awarded as The Best Virtual Reality Website Designs in the “Web design Awards”
This project is an invitation to reflect on the relationship between animals and humans, specifically looking into the intrusive and damaging impact humans are having on the living environments of most species on Earth.
In April 2023 a human was killed by a bear in northern Italy while running in Val di Sole, Trentino. This tragic event, together with the most recent shooting of the bear Amarena in Abruzzo National Park, is highlighting once more the need for new and improved regulations for interspecies cohabitation. It is the animals’ turn to implement new solutions.
‚Amarena, Human Repellent for Animals’ is a newborn organisation that designs and distributes products to improve livability in the forest by keeping humans away.
Meet the first product. Amarena, Human Repellent for Bears.
‚Amarena, Human Repellent for Bears‘ is presented in a single channel video in “animal instinct/ instinct animal” a group exhibition on show at MBAL Museum of Fine Arts in Le Locle (Switzerland)
The collective: Michele Salati, Nuria Krämer, N&MS, Pierfrancesco Celada, Yiannis Loukos, Edu Torres
2023, single-channel video
The souvenir is one of the central topics of my artistic work. My last piece focuses on the city of Barcelona, whose image has changed a lot in recent years. I chose the Pakistani beer seller, a regular sight in the city, to be the emblematic figure of Barcelona. A statue of the Pakistani was created - a real size sculpture on the streets of Barcelona – as well as accompanying souvenirs – smaller versions of the statue. My aim with this piece was to open a dialogue about the life and integration of certain groups of immigrants in Barcelona and to encourage reflection on the evolution of cities and their image. Exhibited at: Base Elements Gallery, Barcelona, 2011 and Venice Biennale, 2011 (Intervention).
Italy is world renowned for its gastronomic qualities and, as we know, all Italians believe that their Mammas cook the best food on earth. Italian MAMMAS embody the ancient culinary knowledge passed on from grannies to grandchildren for countless generations. Every Mamma has her own special recipe, a 5 star dish for her loved ones. So why not share this privilege with everybody? By offering a service where people can "rent" a real Italian Mamma, finally everyone has the opportunity to learn some of the secrets of real Made-in-Italy cuisine. I developed a social network and online platform, which on the one hand offers Italian mammas around the world the possibility to share their cooking knowledge, and on the other hand gives Italian cuisine lovers the chance to have a unique experience with original Italian cuisine. www.rentamamma.com
Start up, Social network (on going project)
Illuminated for the freedom of speech is a photographic series that I’ve created in Hong Kong. Freedom of Speech is what illuminates the young protesters in Hong Kong. Through their mobile phones they are able to give shape to their freedom of expression. Each illuminated face becomes a symbol of the desire to share the protest with the rest of the world. Communication is a powerful tool for democracy. The phone is no longer just a mere object for communication, or worse, a simple status symbol, instead it becomes a weapon which allows people to share their opinions and thoughts across a country, such as China, where freedom of speech is often limited. The exhibition: “ILLUMINATED for the freedom of speech” was an exhibition, which was taking place in Admiralty, one of the centres of the protest. All around the occupied area in Admiralty was full of thousands of messages of solidarity for the protesters from the rest of the population of Hong Kong. The exhibition was placed right at the heart of Admiralty’s occupied area, where all the students and supporting people of Hong Kong passed by. It integrated the “illuminated” photo series with the messages written on post-its placed on the walls. While going up the stairs, the visitors found themselves on a virtual bridge, which conceptually links the two hemispheres of communication, the offline messages written on Post-its and the online messages from the mobile phones. (Produced in 2015)
Uncle VS Uncle is a collaboration with the Singaporean photographer Aik Beng Chia. Both of us were interested in capturing middle age men from Hong Kong & Singapore in everyday life situations. In Asia every stranger older than you is labelled "Uncles" or "Aunties". Aik Beng Chia and me decided to create a photographic online-challenge by posting on social networks pictures of uncles of our respective cities side by side. We invited the audience to vote for their favourite uncle of the day.
Check the project here:
This project captures people openly confessing their deepest secrets in a photo booth. These confessions, however, never leave the photo booth because no sound is recorded. What we record are a series of images that show only the facial expressions and body language of the confessors. Photo Booth Confessions invites people to enter a space of intimacy where you can experience other's secrets, where fear, excitement and shame become visible but remain a secret. This art project was developed and produced in collaboration with Nuria Krämer and Golf Nuntawat in 2011.
Like Cheese on Macaroni is a personal ongoing project, which started as a t-shirt collection with the aim to become in a second step a food brand. The t-shirt collection, in this case, becomes a sort of teaser campaign.
Local Italian companies, attracted by the design of the shirts, got in touch with me asking for the design of new product labels.
When something fits perfectly, in Italy we say it’s "Like Cheese on Macaroni”. This expression shows the passion for food in Italian culture.
I invited a select group of international designers to develop their own designs inspired by Italian food, and expressing the joy of this culture.
Each product has a unique story, which is reinterpreted in a fresh new style. Once the designs were done, I invited some documentary photographers to develop visual stories based on each design. These stories were used on social networks to create brand contents.
Brand development
(On going project)
Super Discount!, as the name implies, is about sales. In the sales process something interesting happens: the value of an object is debated, questioned and redefined. This project invites artists to think about their relationship to the art market. It creates room for discussion about the art market, advertising and artistic strategies. Super Discount! is an artistic action that includes a video piece and exhibition. The video is a parody of TV art sales while the exhibition generates direct debate on the relationship between art, the art market and advertising. The exhibition positions art pieces side by side with daily promotional objects thereby comparing art to the market, everyday merchandise products and the advertising world in a very particular way. This art project was developed and produced in collaboration with Nuria Krämer. Exhibited at: Otras Cosas de Villarrosas Gallery, Barcelona, 2010.
FAKE! is a street art project that reflects on the concept of originality and observes the phenomena of lable copying from an ironic point of view. FAKE! takes the imitation products, like womans handbags, from the black market and turns them into fashion objects by pointing out that they are fake. FAKE! consists of a fake presentation of this new fashion product in a foto series made in Barcelona.
(Produced in 2004)
This is a small series of short videos that act like souvenirs.
They are memories, light impressions that all together
form a sensorial experience.
"Islanders" is a on-going photographic project capturing moments of intimacy in Hong Kong city life.
