Through the Lens: Understanding Trevor Yeung’s Practice through his Photography

In the era of information explosion, we process thousands of messages every day. Sometimes we digest an image in a few seconds or even make assumptions about the content of a video or article based on an image thumbnail. The way an image is used and manipulated influences our understanding and imagination based on our individual experiences and sensibilities. According to art historian E.H. Gombrich, ‘what a picture means to the viewer is strongly dependent on his past experience and knowledge. In this respect the visual image is not a mere representation of “reality” but a symbolic system.’^[1] Driven by this phenomenon, Hong Kong artist Trevor Yeung explores photography and image making as a way to express his aesthetics and artistic practices. He also uses photography to supplement his immersive installation and mixed media works to provide visual clues for the viewers. As an artist who prefers not to reveal every detail of his work at first glance, leaving visual clues for viewers’ imagination enables him to subtly convey his own feelings as well as help viewers connect to these universal emotions.

Understanding Yeung’s photography is crucial to unlocking his artistic practice as a whole. He carefully considers the subject, work dimensions, mounting, framing, and display setting of each photographic work in a symbolic way to channel the concepts, even imposing on viewers’ ways of seeing.

In the early years of his career between 2010 and 2015, Yeung explored his enduring interest in the intersection between private and shared spaces, physical and emotional distance that plays with intimacy and anonymity. One of the early examples is his photography-based mixed media series, Hostel world: Sleepy Bed (2010–ongoing), which documented and fictionalised an unusual balance of intimacy and anonymity between himself, as the participant photographer, and the strangers with whom he shared a hostel room while travelling. By capturing the strangers inside the shared rooms, Yeung documented the enforced yet intimate moments with his subjects. Hostel rooms, which are a shared communal space, where we temporarily share and spend a night with strangers, are turned into a private, closed environment. Yeung later engraved the geometrical figurative patterns onto the resulting prints, reinforcing his longing for actual intimacy with these anonymous subjects by capturing them in their most unguarded moments. In 2015, Yeung continued to explore the same themes with physical plants. He carefully staged a big potted plant in front of his photographic work Garden Sitter (2015), which captures a stranger lying on a corner of a public park, to explore different ways of seeing. By placing a plant in front of the photograph, partially obscuring the work, Yeung creates an experience where one has to peek, imparting the idea that one’s view is always obstructed by surroundings and circumstances. It forces viewers to navigate the space to better view the work, highlighting ways of seeing and the relationship between the viewer and the subject being viewed.

Apart from bringing the viewers up close to the context, Yeung often takes work dimension and framing design as a point of departure for the interpretation of his works. In Yeung’s solo exhibition there’s something missing (2020) at a private apartment during the Covid-19 pandemic, the apartment was only lit with blue ambient lighting, creating a feeling of isolation and anxiety. Walking through clusters of hanging shirts, a postcard-sized photography work, titled Awkward Introduction (2019), was affixed to the tiled wall with air mail stickers. The trees in the photograph are awkwardly connected to each other in a snowy scene, offering a sense of loneliness that longs for a relationship. Designed like a postcard and affixed with seemingly makeshift adhesives in the corner of the cluster of clothes, the photograph has a sentimental quality akin to a personal memory.

Yeung employs a similar approach of manipulating imagination in his latest exhibition Trevor Yeung: Courtyard of Detachments at the Cissy Pui-Lai Pao and Shinichiro Watari Galleries, M+, an adaptation of Yeung’s 2024 exhibition, Courtyard of Attachments, Hong Kong in Venice, at the 60th International Art Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia, representing Hong Kong in a Collateral Event. In this exhibition, the once filled aquariums are emptied of water, leaving only traces of dried algae, mineral particles, and water stains from Venice to hint at their recent use. When visitors enter the gallery, they first encounter a reception area, whose design mimics the classic entrances to small businesses in Hong Kong, comprising of second-hand furniture and aquariums he sourced online in the installation Two Unwanted Lovers (Time Out) (2025). The empty aquariums emphasise the suspension in time. Yet under the glass cover of the desk, itself reminiscent of an aquarium, Yeung has placed a small photographic work, titled Team Photo of Piranha Department (2013), which captures the only remnant of water and fish in the exhibition. Placing this photograph as the first work that visitors encounter strengthens the idea of time’s acceleration, as well as the exhibition’s core themes of attachments and absence.

Couple in bubbles (2021, printed 2025) is an extension of the artist’s continued approach to manipulating imagination through the scale and framing of the photograph as an object. At 108 x 162 cm, the subject in Couples in bubbles is enlarged to a slightly larger scale than reality. Printing without the white border allows viewers to immerse themselves in the scene at the Goldfish Street located in Mong Kok, Hong Kong. It coheres to the installation work titled Gate of Instant Love (2024) in the same exhibition. It imitates the feelings of excitement that come with taking home a new pet fish from the Goldfish Street.

In contrast, Yeung realises the paired photography works, Pondering Pond (Winter 1) and Pondering Pond (Winter 2) (2025), at a rather small scale at 90 x 60 cm each. The smaller dimensions of the works, which feature the motif of the wilting lotus alongside the sculptural work Mx. Tried-My-Best (2025), provides a more intimate viewing experience. The lack of white borders transforms the photographs from a documentation of a reality to imagery that evokes memories of the installation titled Mx. Trying-My-Best (2024) at the exhibition in Venice. This approach blurs the boundary between the wilting lotus motif in the photographs and the bamboo walls in the gallery. The work slowly blends into the environment and transforms the indoor space into an imagined outdoor courtyard. Finally, Yeung frames the photography works in thin mirror-finished frames to blur the border between the work and the environment. The mirror-finished frames also correspond to the sculptural work Mx. Tried-My-Best which consists of mirror and metal to mimic the wilting lotus pots, creating visual connections to signify that the lotus can thrive even in the most difficult conditions, reminding us of cycles of decay and rebirth.

In his image making practice, Yeung articulates our collective fascination with longing for resonance. He carefully considers every element of image making—from composition, output dimension, mounting, framing, and display setting—to infuse hints to the viewers. They are not only visual clues to interpret Yeung’s installation and mixed media works, but also an entry point to communicate to viewers by embedding signifiers of the concepts behind his photography works. His enduring interest towards the power dynamics between the photographer, the viewer, and the subject of the photograph delicately addresses authority relations and how our imagination is often manipulated by an image making process and decisions made by others. After all, manipulating imagination is derived from a longing desire to understand and be understood, which is especially poignant in a time when emotional connections are becoming increasingly alienated.