HART HAUS is pleased to present "Trichiasis", Hou Lam Tsui’s solo show curated by Kobe Ko.

"Trichiasis" sheds light on the beauty of failing that lies in a refusal to acquiesce to the dominant logics of power and discipline. The term refers to a medical condition where eyelashes grow inward, against their expected course. This “wrong way” growth is reimagined here as a radical force, one that challenges norms, orders, and systemic power from feminist and queer perspectives. In Glitch Feminism, Legacy Russell reclaims the “glitch” not as a malfunction, but as a subversive and powerful rupture. Similarly, as Jack Halberstam explores in The Queer Art of Failure, there is something profoundly queer about failure, “failing is what queer have always done exceptionally well”.

Premiere in this solo exhibition is a new essay film, "Trichiasis", which explores the female fantasy as an escape from patriarchal and heteronormative reality. Blending archival materials, 35mm photographs, Super 8 footage, and 3D animation, it follows the girls who fantasise—from yume joshi (dreaming girls) fantasising about interactions and even romance with fictional characters and idols, to fujoshi (rotten girls) who immerse themselves in boys’ love (BL) content. Such fantasy can be cruel—being accused of reading the “wrong book” as a reader, being arrested for publishing works depicting homosexual romantic relationships as a writer, or being punished with an ending of death as a heroine. Yet their fantasies become a form of resilience: a space to redefine womanhood and reject societal norms. Through stories of desire, love, hope, and refusal, the film reimagines so-called “failure” as an empowering rejection of imposed order.

Central to the exhibition are sculptural works employing soap and found objects, responding to the material’s fragility and its resonance with precarious lives. Soap recurs in the artist’s practice for its precarity, banality, and quiet resonance with the nuanced experiences of women and queer communities. It symbolises society’s obsessive pursuit of cleanliness—and the gendered association of purity with femininity. Through image transfers on used soap and juxtapositions with found objects, the artist rethinks media‑induced femininity, engaging both its physical and symbolic materiality.