Yuen Nga Chi 袁雅芝 Hong Kong, b. 1994

Yuen Nga Chi, born in 1994 and based in Hong Kong, works across photography, video, and essayistic narration, drawing inspiration from the tensions between lived experience and professional encounters. After graduating in 2019, she worked as a photographer in a theme park, where she observed the lethargy and repetitive behaviors of caged animals—birds circling endlessly, pacing back and forth, pecking at metal until injured. These encounters prompted her to question the very existence of zoos, leading her to document the survival conditions of animals in public enclosures such as Hong Kong Park and the Zoological and Botanical Gardens, exposing the anxiety, stress, and asymmetrical power embedded in captivity.

Her practice extends beyond private narrative into a critical engagement with public space and ecological violence. Through revisiting her former home, she reflects on traces of habitation and situates “home” within the tensions of transience, displacement, and loss. More recently, her research has expanded to the entangled histories of marine resources and overlapping geographies, probing the symbiosis and conflict between human and nonhuman life. In doing so, she constructs a critical visual language that frames ecology and power within the same field.

Her work has been exhibited in Hong Kong, China, Korea, Singapore, Australia, Taiwan, and Indonesia, including the Singapore International Photography Festival (2018), the Pingyao International Photography Festival (2016), and the Taiwan International Video Art Exhibition (2023). Currently pursuing an MFA at The Chinese University of Hong Kong, she continues to develop moving image as an event‑based archive that reveals obscured lives and political tensions.