What if you look to the dominant historical and contemporary narratives where you live and don’t see yourself reflected there? How do you negotiate the space between the culture that surrounds you and your individual identity? My interest is in exploring this area, especially through the body itself. The body can be a repository of meaning, a physical reality forever in the present, remembering and continually in the process of being formed and re-formed; an instrument that writes its own personal narrative.
Kay Mei Ling Beadman is an artist, researcher, educator and co-founder of Hidden Space, an artist-run initiative in Hong Kong. She uses her Chinese and white English mixed ethnicity to explore complex identity formation, often focusing on embodied aspects of lived experience amid socio-politically and culturally constructed assumptions around race. Her multidisciplinary practice includes wearables, installation, lecture performance, video, painting and text. She has a PhD from the School of Creative Media, City University of Hong Kong, an MFA from RMIT, Australia, a BFA from the University of Reading, UK, and is a part-time lecturer at the Academy for Visual Arts at Hong Kong Baptist University. Kay zigzagged between HK and the UK growing up, but has lived and worked permanently in Hong Kong since 1999. She has exhibited in Australia, China, Hong Kong, Serbia, Singapore, South Korea, Sri Lanka and the UK.
Selected Exhibitions
2024
Closer Together, Pao Galleries, Hong Kong Arts Centre, Hong Kong
2023
Closer Together, RMIT Gallery, Naarm | Melbourne, Australia
2022
Nexus between Art, Practice & Research, Floating Projects, Hong Kong
2021
BOOKED, Tai Kwun, Hong Kong
Fault Lines, Present Projects, Hong Kong
Interdependencies, Institute for Contemporary Arts, Singapore
And the Ship Sails On, JCCAC, Hong Kong
System Dreams, Run Run Shaw Creative Media Centre, Hong Kong
The Invisible Child Grows Up (Solo), Zizhi Babel, Shanghai, China
2020
Image and Sound In Spite Of..., LASALLE, Singapore
The new (ab)normal, RMIT Gallery, Naarm | Melbourne, Australia
2018
Social Transformations, Pao Galleries, Hong Kong Arts Centre, Hong Kong
Description of Absence, Art Space IAa, Jeju City, South Korea
2017
Silk Road: Portal to World Imagination, Xi’an Art Museum, Xi’an, China
Wayang Malam 2: Short Films, Videos, Animations, McNally School of Fine Arts, Singapore
Enduring Reality Part 3 (Solo), Hidden Space, Hong Kong
Man-made by Nature, City Hall Exhibition Gallery, Hong Kong
2016
IMAF 2016, 18th International Multimedial Festival, Center Gallery, Odzaci, Serbia; and Suluv Gallery, Novi Sad, Serbia
The Museum of International Connectivity, The Dirty Dozen, Naarm | Melbourne, Australia
Crossing Border | Border Crossing, JCCAC, Hong Kong
2015
1st Shenzhen Biennale of Contemporary Art, Shenzhen University Art Museum, Shenzhen, China
This Time, Pao Galleries, Hong Kong Arts Centre, Hong Kong
Tropical Lab 9: Island, Institute for Contemporary Arts, Singapore
The Remembering Body (Solo), Wah Tat Industrial Centre, Hong Kong
Peripheral (Solo), Lightscape Projects, Naarm | Melbourne, Australia
Passageway, Gallery of Hong Kong Art School, Hong Kong Arts Centre, Hong Kong
2014
Burning, 247 Queen’s Road East, Wan Chai, Hong Kong
Asia Contemporary Art Show, BZ Art Gallery, Conrad Hotel, Hong Kong
SIX, Lightscape Projects, Naarm | Melbourne, Australia
This Must be the Place, School of Art Gallery, RMIT, Naarm | Melbourne, Australia
2012
Stepping Out (Solo), Barefoot Gallery, Colombo, Sri Lanka
Selected Collaborative Projects
2025
In Other Wor(l)ds | 換言（世）之 | In anderen Wortwelten, interactive text-based participatory exhibition and workshops at Goethe Gallery, Hong Kong, co-facilitated with Christine M. Kaiser, Michael Leung and Megan Olinger, featuring artists and collectives, Pop and Zebra, Damon Tong, Ning-Ning, Crip Zine and Kaio Wu Hui Nam
2022
Backpack 0.5 Workshop at Documenta 15, Kassel, Germany. Facilitated with Christine M. Kaiser, Megan Olinger, Michael Leung and Tony Maslić
It’s your turn. Workshop with starch (independent art space in Singapore) for Singapore Art Week
Commissioned Writing
Unspoken Connection, 2025
Essay on Ivy Ma and Law Yuk-mui’s art practices
https://www.daoju.art/posts/unspoken-connection-twze5
Reclaiming the Future(s), 2022, catalogue essay for The Post-Human Narratives Project: In the Name of Scientific Witchery, curated by Kobe Ko. Published by Para Site, Hong Kong
No Place Like Home, 2019, WMA, Hong Kong
https://wma.hk/articles/no-place-like-home/
What’s in a Title? 2019, WMA, Hong Kong
https://wma.hk/zh/articles/whats-in-a-title/