Margaret Chu

Margaret Chu was born and received her Master of Fine Arts in Hong Kong. She is a cross-disciplinary artist engaged in sculpture and painting, especially work on paper and wood sculpture. She is interested in exploring art through material transformations, and believes that inspiration comes from interaction between life and materials. She is particularly interested in themes such as “time”, “memories” and “space”. Her works explore the relationship between human, nature and urban life, portraying human emotions via metaphors. Her works has been exhibited in China, Korea, Italy and India.


I am intrigued by the arrangement of the stones on the walls of Suomenlinna, their regularity and repetition of form, the traces of historical texture. Based on knowledge from the Eastern culture, I try to imagine how geometric repetition of forms could echo, what kind of dialogue could I have with the walls of Suomenlinna?

I think of the pavilions in oriental gardens. The tiles used for building them are also arranged one by one in a regular and repetitive form. In my mind the tiles of these pavilions and the stones of the Suomenlinna walls are elements communicating with each other. I use “repetitive, geometric, organic shapes” as the main inspiration of my work, and wish to interact with architectural forms of the island of Suomenlinna and its surroundings, to build sculptures that fuse together elements from the Eastern and Western cultures.

Margaret Chu’s residency at HIAP is realised in collaboration with the Art Promotion Office (Hong Kong, China)