In the late afternoon sun, the streets of To Kwa Wan are bustling with life. Making my way to Wing Po So’s studio in Hong Kong’s Kowloon district, I pass car repair workshops, florists, hawker stalls, fruit and vegetable vendors, and watch as several butchers hack away at large chunks of fresh meat which appear lucent underneath the plastic red lamps. It’s mid-January, and Chinese New Year is right around the corner. This buzz of excitement follows me into a more secluded area filled with grungy, low-rise industrial buildings, one of which houses So’s studio. A rickety elevator takes me up to her floor, where she emerges from behind hefty metalworking machines to greet me.

Born in 1985 in Hong Kong into a family of Chinese doctors and herbalists, So spent most of her childhood at her parents’ pharmaceutical shop, helping to categorize and process the raw medicinal ingredients. Intrigued by the sundry materials and their morphology, So now merges them with everyday objects to create large-scale installations and sculptures that explore our simultaneous alienation from and connection to the natural world. With a research-driven approach that she often intertwines with science fiction concepts, So makes work that is heavily informed by the slow, meticulous observations and sensitivities of traditional Chinese medicine, philosophy, and spirituality.