A Self-Portrait: The Process of Erasing

Participating Artist
Chilai Howard

Curator
Isaac Leung

Opening hours of the Goethe-Gallery and Black Box Studio:
10:00 AM - 7:00 PM (Mon - Fri)
9:30 AM - 6:30 PM (Sat)
Closed on Sundays and Public Holidays

Exhibition opens on September 7, 2026 (Mon) at 6:30 PM in the presence of the curator and artist.

He wants to erase, but he archives.
He wants to let go, but he preserves.
He covers the object's history, but monumentalises its form.
He questions memory, but constructs a self-portrait from it.

A Self-Portrait: The Process of Erasing presents Chilai Howard’s solo exhibition as both a personal journey and an inquiry into what constitutes memory, objects, and the self. At its core lies a paradox: to let go of a memory, one must first give it a final form, while recognising the impossibility of ever possessing the past itself.

The artist deliberately metallises objects associated with different stages of his life. Through metallisation, fluid memories are given a rigid, continuous surface. Memories, regrets, attachments, and pain appear preserved, made durable, even monumentalised, while traces of lived experience disappear beneath the same metallic skin. The process simultaneously preserves and erases, taking on an almost ritualistic function. Rather than destroying the objects, he withdraws them from their ordinary functions, seals their former surfaces, and transforms them into something closer to relics. The object remains, but something of its former life has also been concealed.

Yet the exhibition asks: are objects themselves memories, and can memory ever truly be preserved or erased? No matter how precisely the artist narrates, preserves, or remembers it, the past itself cannot be recovered. Metallisation cannot repair this absence; instead, it marks it. The exhibition therefore becomes an archive not of what can be recovered, but one constructed around what can no longer be recovered. What remains is a hardened surface formed around an absence.

Paradoxically, erasure is achieved through preservation: to erase the autobiographical object, the artist makes it more permanent; to relinquish the memory, he monumentalises its remains. The process is therefore less about attachment to the objects themselves than about the absence that already surrounds each object. Metallisation does not fill this absence; it only makes the absence more visible.

This exhibition asks not simply, How do we forget? but How do we change our relationship to the things through which we remember? The self is shaped through memories, around them, and through their absences. The past cannot be recovered, yet neither can it simply be deleted. Something remains, while something else is irretrievably gone. In this space between holding on and letting go, the artist challenges the seemingly coherent narrative through which we construct ourselves: this is who I was; therefore, this is who I am.
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Public Programme
Public engaged performances: Give and Take
12.09. & 3.10.2026 (Sat), 3:00 PM - 6:00 PM
Black Box Studio
Free admission. 

Bring a memorable metal object to the performance and entrust it to a process of transformation. During the performance, your object will be metallised, giving its familiar form a new surface and presence. At the end, you are invited to take the transformed object home with you.

*Different metals may react differently. Objects made of iron or aluminium are recommended for the best results.
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About Artists

Chilai Howard (b.1986) is a Hong Kong interdisciplinary art worker and designer, graduated at the Critical Intermedia Laboratory, School of Creative Media, CityU HK and HKUST, who experiments the possibility of mediums creating atmosphere that explores humans’ subconscious mind, behavior and physical interactivity. His experimental moving images and mixed-media installations have been exhibited in Tate Modern London, ZKM | Media Museum Karlsruhe, Museum of Contemporary Art Taipei, Arad Art Museum, National Centre for Contemporary Art Saint Petersburg and more. He received Best of the Best from Red Dot Design Award (2025), Agency of the Year from the The HKMA/ViuTV & Now TV Awards for Marketing Excellence (2024), Award for Young Artist (Media Arts) from the 17th Hong Kong Arts Development Awards (2023) and named HKMOL’s Most Outstanding Leader of the Year (2022) and awarded multiple awards from London International Awards, D&AD, GOOD DESIGN, AAM Award by American Alliance of Museums, Effie Award, MARCOM, Golden Pin Design Award, DFA, MUSE Design Award and more. 
His passion also goes into graphic arts and spatial design, he is the founder and creative director of the award-winning creative studio NNNNNNN., creative director of FUSE | Omnicom Media Group, an artistic consultant of Videotage Hong Kong and guest lecturer in various universities and seminars.

About Curator

Isaac Leung is a practicing artist, curator, and scholar in art and culture.
In 2003, Leung received a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Over the last few decades, he has initiated and participated in various projects, including exhibitions, workshops, lectures, publications, online projects, and symposia. Some of these projects include '40 Years of Video Art' (Hong Kong, China; and Germany), 'Time Test – International Video Art Research Exhibition' (Beijing, China), 'ISEA Festival' (Hong Kong, China), 'Both Sides Now' (Hong Kong, China; the UK; and various countries), 'Loop Barcelona' (Barcelona, Spain), 'China Remixed' (Indiana, USA), 'Clockenflap' (Hong Kong, China), 'Art Basel Crowdfunding Initiative' (Hong Kong, China), and 'Beyond the Singularity' (Hong Kong, China). Leung is currently an Associate Professor in the Faculty of Arts at the Chinese University of Hong Kong.