A Good Yarn

Artist Movana Chen has travelled the world in search of inspiration, but being stuck in Hong Kong has opened up a realm of new possibilities

- Oliver Giles

A hiker gets lost in the Siberian tundra. Thick snow blankets the ground. Clouds billow threateningly overhead and the temperature plummets to minus 25C. She panics.

Two strangers connect over the internet. They discuss books, art and travelling. After months of messaging, the pair meet at a coffee shop in Seoul, where one teaches the other to knit.

A woman in Hong Kong is presented with a key. She carries it to the Sicilian city of Palermo, where a hand-drawn map leads her to a lone blue house on a sun-drenched hill. The key fits.

These sentences might read like they are ripped from the pages of novels, but they are true stories from the eventful life of the wonderful, wacky Hong Kong artist Movana Chen—and she has plenty more. “I have so many stories, so many,” says Chen, 45, laughing. “I love life on the road.” Chen spends up to ten months a year travelling, gathering materials and ideas to fuel her art, which takes the form of drawings, paintings, photographs, videos, performances and, most famously, installations created from woven paper. Her latest pieces are being shown this month at an exhibition at Flowers Gallery in Sheung Wan, opening on September 8.