In her dreamlike abstract paintings, Firenze Lai depicts human figures with disproportionate and pliable bodies. They are often compressed, stretched, pierced, or bent in relation to their surroundings, visualizing a fluid, sentimental, and ongoing interchange between the subject and the background. Seeing the protagonists in her painting as ‘adjectives’, or carriers of feelings, Lai treats these anonymous and amorphous figures as her way to depict the human condition shaped by the socio-political flux in contemporary society. Sensitively capturing the texture of quotidian life, Lai’s recent works express the inner turmoil and diasporic experiences among Hong Kong individuals. In A Porous Dream (2024), Lai depicts the human bodies as punctured, opening to the equally perforated background. The flowy, porous background seems to be absorbing the human figures into a whirling psychological landscape.

WORK IN THE EXHIBITION: A Porous Dream (2024), oil on canvas, 150 × 150 cm. Courtesy of the artist and White Cube