A dialogue between Noura Al Sayeh, and Justin Hui exploring the theme of anonymity through their works, research, and reflections on their design philosophies in a contemporary context.

Trained in architecture, Justin reconstructs spaces and events from memory, archives, and imagination; exploring how form shapes our understanding of history, experience, and identity. Noura advises the Bahrain authority for Culture and antiquities, where she oversees the planning of cultural institutions and advises on urban rehabilitation; she was also recently appointed curator of the next edition of Arab Design Now at Design Doha 2026.

Moderated by Shumi Bose.

Thank you, Brandon Chang for organizing this dialogue.

7:30 - 9:00 PM GMT, April 24, 2025

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Thank you Ingrid Pui Yee Chu for including my book “New Territories” in the exhibition “nowhere left but here” among “artists who use letters, maps, postcards, stamps, and other printed materials” as mediums often associated with conceptual art practices “as sites through which to document and share the artists’ most intimate moments.”

Artists’ Book Library at Tai Kwun Contemporary

March 21 - August 18, 2025

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From the Curatorial Researcher Chris Wan:

“This project is an experimental exploration of research and curation, beginning with an investigation into Sung Wong Toi, a vanished Hong Kong landmark, in an attempt to identify multiple entry points for contemporary art within the complexities of history and shifting realities. At the same time, it also reflects on the ontology and methodology of research-based artistic and curatorial practices, particularly in relation to historical inquiry.

New York-based architects/artists Sun Yan and Justin Hui participated in the project’s early research phase, reconstructing the digital landscape of Sung Wong Toi using historical archives. Throughout this process, we made many intriguing discoveries and engaged in stimulating discussions. In fact, it is through conversations with different researchers and artists that the project has continued to evolve in multiple directions. For this reason, I hope to open up the research process to broader participation—this project may not only take the form of an exhibition but could also become a collection of writings, a documentary, a screening, or the beginning of many important dialogues.

The final outcome is not the sole focus; the research process itself is an essential method and source of inspiration.”

Project Sung Wong Toi」
研究駐地和工作室開始 Research Residency and Open Studio

March 25 - April 4
CRASH, Rm 303, JCCAC, Hong Kong

“Black Mountain, Red Earth” chronicles the desolation of mining towns in the Zambian Copperbelt and the emergence of multinational frontier towns in western Zambia. Following the crash of global copper prices in the 1990s, this mineral-rich region underwent significant changes as state-run mines were sold to multinational mining conglomerates. This privatization resulted in drastic cuts to welfare and funding for urban development, profoundly changing the lives of those who work and live there.

The project focuses on two distinct regions: “Black Mountain” portrays the devastating effects of privatization through the lens of miners and their livelihoods in the Zambian Copperbelt; “Red Earth” explores the emerging frontier towns in western Zambia, where multinational companies are vying for a share of Africa’s vast copper reserves.

Through interviews and photography, these two chapters provide a comparative portrayal between a place left behind by globalization and another borne by it, between the shadows of Zambia’s colonial legacy and the emergence of a global Africa shaped by competing multinational interests. These narratives foreshadow a broader landscape intertwined by global markets and forces.

Thank you Carson Chan and Megan Eardley for responding.

October 31, 10:00 a.m.–12:00 p.m. EST

The Ambasz Institute, MoMA, New York

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Responding to Lesley Lokko’s theme “The Laboratory of the Future” and the pavilion’s focus on Hong Kong’s future with mega projects such as the Northern Metropolis, the two-channel video features a series of images drawn from Hong Kong’s Northern borderlands to Chinese construction sites across the African continent – places undergoing dramatic change that I have spent years exploring and documenting.

Photographs unfold like a visual poem, interwoven with personal reflections and found objects scavenged from demolished villages. These fragments are paired together on a folding screen, transcending familiar boundaries to create new connections between development, destruction, memory, time, boundaries, and displacement that reconsider histories beyond the lens of colonialism.

An imagined landscape emerges, portraying the erasure of places and the creation of an abstract future still unfolding.

“Unsettled Ground 未定之境”, 18th International Architecture Exhibition–La Biennale di Venezia as part of the Hong Kong pavilion, titled “Transformative Hong Kong”.

Arsenale, Campo della Tana, Venice
May 20 – November 26

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“Searching for Poon” is exhibited at the 2024 Hong Kong International Photo Festival. Thank you Curators Blues Wong and Carol Chow for including me among fifteen artists showcasing portfolios about notions of ‘home’.

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When my grandmother began losing her memory, her photographs became clues to a history I never knew. I used her images to trace her journey from mainland China into Hong Kong, imagining around the fragments of her life. In the absence of her past, I became the architect of her memories.

Measuring from memory, I began building places that no longer existed, but might still linger in her fading mind. Memories are clarified back into existence, lying somewhere between reality and my recollections of it, in the details of a photograph and spaces beyond. As her reality and my imagination converge, our bond strengthens, bridging histories across generations and places.

Hong Kong Arts Centre 香港藝術中心

November 08 - December 08, 2024

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Deepest thanks to Working Assumptions for the generous grant which allows me to continue the work of uncovering and reconstructing my grandmother’s lost memories.

Also excited to work with my fellow grantees whose works revolve around notions of family and home. Alicia Vera (@aliciavera), Debe Arlook (@debearlook), Devin Allen (@bydvnlln), Nolan Trowe (@nolantrowe, @steadymantainin), Preston Gannaway (@pgannawayphoto), Terra Fondriest (@terrafondriest), and Trent Davis Bailey (@trentdavisbailey).

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It was a joy photographing the only U.S. project by Korea’s pioneering first-generation landscape architect, Jung Youngsun. Thank you Curator Jihoi Lee, Hyoeun Kim, and Hyoyeon Kim for including these photos in Jung Youngsun's enormous retrospective at the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art and at the 2025 Venice Architecture Biennale.

National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Seoul, South Korea

April 5 - September 22, 2024

Procuratie Vecchie, 19th Venice Architecture Biennale

May 10, 2025 ~ July 18, 2025

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My conversation with NOWNESS is featured online and hardcopy. We revisit my early fieldwork in Africa to my recent work centered around reconstructing lost memories.

Link to article (Chinese)

Searching for Poon is now sold at Printed Matter at Chelsea and online.

Printed Matter Online

“New Territories” is exhibited at the Space on Paper Jimei x Arles Chinese Contemporary Photo book Exhibition in Xiamen. Thank you curator Li Zijian

As a significant and unique medium for presenting photography, photobooks have always garnered attention from artists. The study of photography theory has also remained a focal point in the realms of visual culture and communication studies. The “Space on Paper - Jimei x Arles Book Exhibition” continues its focus on the development of contemporary photobooks over the past year, endeavoring to collect and showcase outstanding photography books and publications on photography theory from around the world.

15 December - January 21, 2024
Jimei Art Center, Three Shadows Photography Art Centre Xiamen
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“New Territories” is exhibited along 240 other titles of curated Sam iz Dat: (independent/underground) publications by Chinese-speaking Creators. Presented in the US for the very first time, this book fair seeks to explore and present the essence of independent art and literary publishing within highly capitalized and/or censored contexts.

15 -16 September, 2023
New York City University Settlement

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Joined together with artists Chan Oi Yan, Almond Chu, and Kevin Ling, moderated by Blues Wong and Carol Chow, we talked about works that extend far beyond the elements of photographic print and frame including artificial intelligence, world-building, performance art, archive-diving, and model-making, culminating in takes of home that skew towards either literally imaginary or imaginatively literal.

16:30-18:00 09 November, 2024

Pao Galleries, Hong Kong Arts Centre

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Publication grant from the Hong Kong Arts Development Council for the research and development of a book prototype for “Searching for Poon”

2023

Honored to be one of six satellite exhibitors as part of the 2022 HKIPF, where my photographs and a newly published book from the series “New Territories” are exhibited.

The farther I walked, the more the border between the landscape and my imagination began to blur. Beyond the edge of land was nothing but the vast expanse of my imagination, longing to find the meaning of home in a city that is ever changing.

05 November - 28 December, 2022
Kubrick Cafe, 3 Public Square, Hong Kong

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MONU focuses on the impact of transnational processes on cities in general and the consequences of transnational relations between individuals, groups, firms, or institutions for cities in particular.

For Issue 22, I write about new patterns of urbanization across the Zambian Copperbelt fueled by resource extraction and foreign capital.

MONU Issue 22

In the article "CLOG: SCI-FI," I explore how OMA uses iconography to create new architectural possibilities, referencing OMA's design proposal for the Ras Al-Khaimah Convention and Exhibition Center (2007) that bears a striking resemblance to the Death Star from the Star Wars franchise.

Additionally, I discuss Rem Koolhaas's interest in the sphere as a symbol of a self-contained world, drawing connections to Samuel Friede's Globe Tower (1906) and the self-contained environments of modern theme parks and resorts, increasingly consumed by their own image.

CLOG: Sci-Fi Issue

Grateful to have my photographs included in Dr. Ching Kwan Lee’s ethnographic study, “The Spectre of Global China” (University of Chicago Press). I met Dr. Lee while conducting fieldwork in Zambia and she was more than generous in sharing her experience and contacts, whom appear in my images.

Spectre of Global China

Thank you for inviting me to share my lecture “Decoding Visual Structures in Photography” and exhibit my work from “Urban Africa, Made in China” at the CICA Museum together with Minyoung Kang(강민영), Eli Kessler, Minu Kim (김민우), Joella Kiu, Eric T. Kunsman, Wenwen Liu, Alex Manea, Maria Petroff, Miki SASAKI, Jinsik Shin (신진식), Rio Ahn ( 안리오), Kyle Yip, Junghye Yun (윤정혜)

16 March - 03 April, 2022

CICA Museum, South Korea

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In the 2023 Winter Issue of Being Hong Kong, we unearth my grandmother’s past through the photographs and documents she leaves behind. I talk about the nature of photography in the absence of memory, filling voids of forgotten histories with imagination, and asking how the nature of memory informed the final design of the book.

January 2024, Hong Kong
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Excited to have my book, Searching for Poon, sold by Seaton Street Press at the 2024 Printed Matter Art Book Fair.
25 - 27 April, 2024
548 W. 22 St, New York

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Photographs of Cho Yiu Chuen Public Housing are featured in the 2024 Autumn edition of Being Hong Kong, with a focus on "Housing, Homing."

The article delves into the experimental public housing model of Cho Yiu Chuen, built in the 1970’s. At the time, the project was not only the tallest public housing building in the world, but incorporated experimental design elements that envisioned the future of urban living for Hong Kong.

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Had the pleasure to join Christine Lee, Lau Chi Chung, Erica T., Natalie Lo Lo Lai, and Law Yuk Mui for the talk and screening, exploring the ambiguity and dynamics among notions of documentation and imagination, personal and collective experiences, here and beyond.    

“The decisive moment emerges from the instantaneous connection between the subject and the object. Such simultaneous coalition re-frames memories, presence and imagination – a moment in time that blurs the boundaries among past, present and future.”  

Moderated by program curator Christine Lee at Kubrick Cafe.

02 December, Kubrick, Hong Kong

10 December, Eaton Hotel

‘New Territories’ is featured at “Hello Thank You Come In: 50th Anniversary Members Exhibition”, featuring artists’ books by CBA members which “make use of cloth, found objects, and archival materials that challenge —and honor—the form of the book.”

Coordinated by Camilo Otero and Gillian Lee

18 January - 30 April, 2024

Center for Book Arts, New York City

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Always a joy to return to Johannesburg and deliver my lecture “Visualising China-Africa: Directions in Photography and Perspective,” at the annual Africa-China Journalists Forum. I talk about semiotics and unconventional forms of storytelling in the context of social media and AI.

21 November, 2023

Wits Centre for Jourrnalism, Johannesburg
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Shared personal journeys with 6 other artists of this year’s HKIPF Satellite exhibitions on ways of using photography, followed by a discussion on what photography may become in the future. Artist: Michelle Chan Wan Chee, Itit Cheung, Jessica Fu, Dion Leung, Kaho Albert Yu, Justin Hui. Talk moderated by Marty Miller.

12 November, 2022, Hong Kong

Grateful to Fujifilm for the opportunity to embark on this deeply personal journey as part of my ongoing project about my grandmother. The works are shown together in Tokyo with 15 other grantees worldwide as part of the GFX Challenge Grant Program 2021.

04 - 24 November, 2022

Fujifilm Square Photo Salon Space, Tokyo

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Seaton Street Press is now a distributor for Searching for Poon. I couldn’t be more grateful to @lindsaymbuchman for supporting this project and to be in the company of artists whose works examine the “intersections of site, language, and memory, including archival histories, counter narratives, social identities, and geographies.”

Seaton Street Press

This was a long time coming for me and I couldn’t be more excited to share my first published photo book. I learned so much in the process with countless days of selection and sequencing, reviewing with friends, lots of photo book dummies, endless writing and rewrites, and days of reviewing and press checking at the printers. The medium of the photobook pushed new narratives and ideas far beyond my expectations and I’m excited to dive further in this medium.

03 December, 2022

Asia One Tower, Hong Kong

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Searching for Poon is exhibited at Field Projects Gallery in New York as part of the group show, Traces, curated by Angelica Aranda.

“The term “trace” can be applied to both positive and negative connections to past events. A trace of someone long gone or a trace of a better time in one’s life. Regardless of its contextual connotation it always declares the presence of some sort of lasting impression. It also suggests the ability to track the source of a connection….The works also represent the tangibility of this idea in their format as books and publications. Physical objects that serve as markers in the progression of life events through their materiality. What traces do we carry and what traces are we actively creating for others in the present time?…” - Angelica Aranda

30 April - 05 May, 2024

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A big thank you to Alexis Andreou, Gordon Mills, and FUJIFILM London for curating the exhibition of 15 winners of the 2021 Fujifilm GFX Grant Award.

FUJIFILM House of Photography, London

06 September - 30 October, 2023

Had a great chat with Oscar Venhuis on the effects of globalisation on cities, the impact of ownership on social issues, and semiotics.

14 October, 2023

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Thank you Dr. Cecilia Chu, Dr. Lu Xiaoxuan, WMA, and the Society of Hong Kong Studies for facilitating this talk on my book “New Territories”. We discuss histories across Northern Hong Kong, notions of territory, and seeing Hong Kong beyond colonial framework in visual culture.

10 February, 2023

In the 2023 Autumn Issue, “Mapping the Old New World”, we dive deeper into the topic of boundaries and their roles in shaping Hong Kong identity. How can photography raise various questions about land, identity, and home beyond the colonial gaze of Hong Kong?

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Thank you HART Haus for hosting the book launch for “Searching for Poon”, where I share the process and development behind the book, “Searching for Poon”.

A sheet of paper is folded into a book, creating the possibility for thousands of associations to be made. This nonlinear act of reading becomes an exploration of memory, akin to how one recalls the past. Photography, once a purveyor of objective reality, transforms into an exercise in imagining.
HART Haus, Kennedy Town, Hong Kong

20 December, 2023

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Thank you Ming Pao Weekly for the writeup on the exhibition of “New Territories”

Link to Article (Chinese)

Thank you Nathan Tsui for the thoughtful article on my show “New Territories”

Link to Article (Chinese)

Grateful to Monique Islam-Salas for hosting me and Ella Barnes for Brooklyn Photography Talk.

19 September, 2024

Hope Gardens Community Center, Brooklyn

“New Territories” is presented at HART Haus.

Landscape becomes a new kind of territory, an inner journey that straddles past and present, nature and civilisation, occupation and absence, the seen and imagined. These images are contemplative as they are descriptive as the artist ponders the meaning of territory, memory and time, and the legacies of the past.

17 December, 2022
HART Haus, Kennedy Town, Hong Kong

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“China’s World Cities,” invited speaker as part of conference “Transfer: Diffusions and Mobilities in the Built Landscapes of Asia and Beyond”, University of Hong Kong Department of Architecture

While modernity has been widely perceived as a universal phenomenon that encompasses different localities in Asia, the forms of cities and urban landscapes have been shaped and reshaped by specific histories, shifting geopolitics, and more recently growing collective concerns over ecology and sustainability. By analyzing the exchange and transfer of knowledge of built environment disciplines, this conference aims to interrogate the roles of the agents and institutions involved in the production of built landscapes in Asia and beyond.

University of Hong Kong, Faculty of Architecture

May 31 - June 01, 2019

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“Urban Africa, Made in China,” invited lecturer as part of “China-Africa in Global Comparative Perspective” for the 5th Conference of the Chinese in Africa/Africans in China Research Network

Université Libre de Bruxelles (ULB)

27 - 29 June, 2018

Invited speaker as part of discussion series “Africa-China: Mapping an Emergent Axis” organized by Prof. Cole Roskam, Architecture, Urban, and Humanities Initiative (AUHI). The panel examined the spatial, political, economic, and cultural parameters of China’s relationship with the African continent.

Thank you Prof. Cole Roskam for inviting me.

University of Hong Kong, Faculty of Architecture

30 March, 2017

Thank you Brandon Chang for hosting my works from “New Territories” at the University of Arts London

04 November, 2024

Images from “Urban Africa, Made in China” are presented at the AISAC China Africa Conference in Padua, Italy. Thank you Dr Mariasole Pepa for the invitation.

12 April, 2024

The book “New Territories” is included in the collections of the Asia Art Archive in Hong Kong.

Proud to present photographs from my fieldwork in Africa for the 2015 Bi-City Biennale of Urbanism / Architecture. Thank you Yutaka and Sarah for the invitation.

Silver in Other/Feature Story for photographs from the series, “Vessels”

Bronze in Fine Art/Landscape for photographs from the series, “At Last Light”

At Last Light: Justin Hui x Jaakko Sorsa, Ocean Table, Hong Kong

July, 2021

“To be Continued” features a group of Hong Kong artists of varying ages, full of stories of their diverse backgrounds, experiences, and style - showing us the creativity, playfulness, and individuality of Hong Kong culture.

Across the African continent, Chinese companies are constructing infrastructure and buildings modeled after China’s urban development. The sheer number of construction throughout the continent has ushered China onto the world stage as a major player in global development, raising profound implications for Africa’s urban future. Through fieldwork and archival research, the project documents and examines the architecture and infrastructure built by Chinese enterprises throughout East and Southern Africa, shedding light on the places transformed by these developments as well as the personal narratives of those shaped by it. These anecdotes provide a glimpse of global urbanization at work on a regional level, asking what Chinese urbanism means for this rapidly urbanizing continent.

Thank you Graham Foundation for the Research and Development Grant for the project “Urban Africa, Made in China”

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It was essential for me to reveal a side of nature which we are unfamiliar with, creating a series of abstractions that would make us “see” the landscape in a new way.

Images were created in response to Perrier-Jouët’s brief and Chef Jaakko Sorsa’s menu.

The Art of Revealing Nature,
Perrier-Jouët x Ocean Table, 2021

Commissioned by Maison Perrier-Jouët

Thank you Cornell University for funding the project “Offshore Urbanism in the Zambian Copperbelt”

Charles Goodwin Sands Memorial Silver Medal for top graduating thesis project Transfer, Cornell University, 2012