Jiaxin Chen’s City Within a City: Folded Lights of Hong Kong investigates the materiality of image-making while capturing the layered identity of Hong Kong. Drawing on her long-standing interest in the “skin of the medium and the poetics of chemistry,” Chen incorporates the Chinese intangible cultural heritage technique of Yongchun paper-weaving painting. This fusion of photography and weaving produces a veil-like surface, where images appear hazy yet concrete, echoing both digital pixels and hand-crafted textures.

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Through contrasts of light and shadow, shifts in color temperature, and the folding of perspectives, Chen constructs a 24-hour visual journey of the city. Daylight’s order and glass towers meet the neon haze of the night, creating a portrait that is both intimate and expansive. Past and present coexist within these works, presenting Hong Kong as a dual entity—One City, Two Breaths—a place of vitality, contradiction, and cultural resonance.