Artist South Ho talks about his work and new solo exhibition Wandering Daily
With a new solo show, the Hong Kong photographer and art world darling is moving forward by looking back
It’s rare to catch artist and photographer South Ho Siu-nam in front of the camera, but when you do, it turns out he’s quite a natural. “I know what to give the photographer,” says Ho, breaking his searing camera-ready gaze with a playful smile and breezy confidence. “I know all the tricks.”
On the roof of Wah Luen Industrial Centre, in Fo Tan, Ho poses against a lush mountainous backdrop dotted with industrial warehouses and housing complexes. His studio is 11 floors below. “It’s great feng shui, actually, but these buildings only appeared around five years ago,” he says, gesturing towards the housing estates. “Before that all you could see from here were green mountains.”
Observing the city and articulating its flux is second nature to the artist, who’s been actively documenting the local landscape since 2005.
Over the years, it’s not only Hong Kong’s topography that Ho’s been cataloguing. He’s become the Hong Kong art world’s favourite photographer, arriving at exhibition openings with camera in hand to capture community moments. He co-founded two of his own spaces – 100ft.PARK (2012-2017) and NewPark in 2022 – and is a well-established artist in his own right, too, known for his “Every Daily” series from 2013 and its black-and-white wide shots of the cityscape superimposed with colourful grids.
The artist also staged a rare performance titled Me, My White Sneakers, and Shoelaces (2025) at the exhibition opening. For it, he wore a pair of trainers from which 100-metre-long shoelaces sprung forth in a windy, maze-like arrangement across the gallery floor. Requiring careful navigation, audience members tiptoed, jumped and dodged the laces to avoid tripping, as Ho marched around the space trailing them behind him. While serving as a metaphor for navigating dense cities and convoluted situations, another inspiration behind the work stemmed from things accumulating as we age, just as the shoelace lengthens. “As you get older you have more responsibilities,” says Ho. “More restrictions, more memories. It all adds on.”