Three young artists from Macau were invited to exhibit at this year’s Art Central with Sands China, bringing representative works to exchange with international peers – a milestone in the expansion of Macau’s contemporary art, as one participating artist noted, saying Macau has the resources and that hard work can lead to success.
Facing international exhibitions, the young artists stressed that their objectives go beyond producing work and include strategic engagement with the global art circuit.
They told media on the sidelines of the event yesterday that participating in crossborder shows presents a twofold advantage: it exposes their work to new, diverse audiences and creates opportunities to build professional ties with galleries, curators, and other industry stakeholders.
These exhibitions also serve as practical testing grounds for market strategies and sales channels. All of the artists shared a clear, shared ambition: to mount a solo exhibition at a recognized international venue in Macau, a platform they believe will let global audiences directly experience both Macau’s distinctive artistic identity and each artist’s individual practice.
Lei Ieng Wai, one of the participating artists, described the exhibition as both an opportunity for his own creative development and a significant platform for promoting Macau art internationally.
The works on display, created between 2019 and 2025 and selected from three series, are primarily paintings that reflect Lei’s focus on the expression of light: from virtual spectra emitted by screens and layered, evolving rhythms, to rainbow-like “maps” that translate those rhythms into visual form, ultimately probing the interplay of light and personal emotion to portray the visual and emotional landscape of contemporary digital society.
“The depth of an artwork often requires time to accumulate, so young artists cannot rush it; they must be patient,” Lei said, stressing that artistic practice demands long-term accumulation and refinement and urging emerging creators to cultivate patience and sustained dedication.
He added that the exhibition’s international exposure will raise the visibility of his work, broaden connections with overseas galleries and peers, and create more opportunities for collaboration, future exhibitions, and market development for Macau artists.
Artist Dor Lio Hak Man brings a careful, lifecentered eye to the exhibition, translating Macau’s everyday scenes into a visual language aimed at international audiences. His participation positions the city’s quotidian rhythms – its people, performances, and street moments – on a larger stage for visitors and collectors from around the world.
Lio’s works on display are grounded in the ordinary. He said his source material is immediate and local: daily routines, live performances, news items, conversations with friends, and even a stray cat racing down a pavement. These everyday encounters are not incidental details but the core building blocks of his canvases, each painting conceived as a snapshot of the present.
A longtime educator as well as practitioner, Lio regarded schools as vital sites for passing on artistic knowledge and cultivating visual sensitivity. He described teaching and making art as mutually reinforcing: in the classroom he seeks to remove students’ fear of drawing and to foster genuine interest and aesthetic awareness.
“My primary philosophy is to make sure people don’t dislike drawing – that they enjoy looking at and making art – so there’s room to improve,” he told the media.
“Macau is not a place lacking in resources. With effort, opportunities can be created and recorded,” said artist Leong Chi Mou, whose practice interrogates how Macau’s rapidly changing urban landscape can be reframed in contemporary painting.
Leong, who described himself in a group media interview as an artist who “plays with whatever he sees,” frequently incorporates found elements from daily life into his canvases. He argued that the city’s ten to twentyyear boom has produced a pervasive “golden” imagery – casinos and a glossy aesthetic – that now shapes outsider perceptions of Macau. According to him, his recent work seeks to translate that golden vocabulary into a visual language that both documents urban transformation and proposes fresh interpretive angles.
Sands Gallery, established by Sands China Ltd., made its debut at Art Central this year as the first integrated tourism and leisure enterprise invited to the fair as an Associate Partner.
Wilfred Wong, executive vice-chairman of Sands China Ltd., described the participation as “just the beginning,” and emphasized the gallery’s longterm ambitions for Macau’s emerging artists.
“We hope to bring worldclass art to Macau and introduce outstanding Macau artists to the world,” Wong told the press.
“Through the Art Central platform, we are proactively promoting Macau’s young generation of passionate contemporary artists to the international stage.” He added that the fair offers valuable opportunities for the artists to “grow and mature” through exchanges with curators, galleries, and fellow artists.
Wong outlined the gallery’s recent activity and credentials: “Over the past four years, we have held 12 exhibitions of different types, including several collaborations with local artists. Last June and July, we invited the organizers of Art Central to visit our space, and following their positive assessment, we were honored to be invited to participate.”
Wong said the Sands Gallery aims to function as a cultural bridge beyond Macau. “We will pay attention to exhibitions in other regions, evaluate cooperation opportunities, and work to take our artists abroad,” he said. On plans for future participation at Art Central, Wong said the gallery will “first review this year’s results, listen to feedback from artists and organizers, and then decide whether to continue next year.”
Meanwhile, as part of Sands’ non-gaming development initiatives, the Iec Long Fireworks Factory was also highlighted at Art Central when Sands Gallery brought Macau’s traditional firework culture to the fair. Yuki Lei, Hong Kong
