Collection: Mukashi Mukashi

Mukashi Mukashi (translating to “Once upon a time” in Japanese) is the first solo print exhibition by Bao Ho in collaboration with L’Epicerie Fine HK.

Since returning to Hong Kong in 2014, Bao has devoted much of her creative energies to painting walls—the talented and driven artist is always ready to grab her spray paint and head to the streets.

Her passion and artistry have brought her coveted commissions and creative collaborations with brands such as Nike, Google, Microsoft, Maserati, and more. In the past few years, her projects included transforming local shop gates and school façades and participating in street art festivals in England and Australia. All the while, on top of these major engagements, she continued to work tirelessly on her personal pieces as she always felt compelled to draw, paint, and realize her vivid imaginary worlds on paper.

Creating these imaginary worlds is a source of excitement and continued inspiration for her as an artist. In her own telling, at the end of each day, she simply cannot wait to start breathing vibrant life into all the forms, characters and scenes she finds populating her mind.

Her imaginary worlds, inspired by the scenes of Hong Kong daily life we encounter every day, are inhabited by unique characters and fantastic creatures both real and fictional. As we step into Bao’s inviting formal dimensions, we also discover her remarkable drawing style reminiscent of doodling and manga art. Seeing her in action— executing every single line and stroke freehand on a wall, on paper, or even on her iPad—reveals the meticulous, thorough, and technically skilled process behind all the vibrant scenes we see in the final works. To document Bao’s freehand drawing process, a time lapse of each work’s creation will be projected at The Stallery during the show.

Bao’s iPad is incidentally how the idea for this exhibition came about. As an artist who has been commissioned on multiple occasions to create works for big companies in the recent years, Bao has been travelling a lot around the world, and her iPad has become such a trusted creative companion on the go that not having it, as she put it, “feels terrible”.

This solo exhibition, presenting about 25 carefully selected prints to the public, will be Bao’s first exhibition in three years. Through the exhibition, we invite each viewer to discover Bao’s colorful world with its fantastic creatures and characters and, at the same time, decipher what the vibrant scenes reveal about the artist’s inner world. Every work on display showcases Bao’s immensely relatable style which, at the same time, is so uniquely inventive.

Exhibition: The Stallery, G/F, 82A Stone Nullah Lane, Wan Chai, Hong Kong

March 28 – April 11 2020

Open everyday from 11 AM to 7 PM