Lok Yin Law
¡®Dinner, in the making¡¯ 2025. Oil on canvas; On table: ¡®Just a family reunion¡¯, 134 x 105cm; Wall works: ¡®Íâ¼ÞÅ® (Married Daughter)¡¯, 40 x 50cm, ¡®Wet paint¡¯, 40 x 50cm.
Artist statement
The series Dinner, in the making reflects how inherited values are passed down ¨C not through loud commands, but through repetition, silence, and the quiet rituals enacted around the family table.
Just a family reunion sets the scene: a traditional Hong Kong banquet reimagined on painted cloth, where the roasted pig is replaced by a painted infant ¨C myself. The table becomes a subdued stage, where children learn to perform politeness, internalise expectations, and offer themselves up for the approval of their elders ¨C again and again. Here, love becomes conditional, and identity is shaped by what pleases those in power.
The two accompanying works extend this quiet performance into the personal lives it shapes. Íâ¼ÞÅ® (Married Daughter) portrays my mother on her wedding day ¨C a moment shadowed by the belief that once a woman marries, she no longer belongs to her birth family, but is folded into her husband¡¯s lineage as their daughter. Her gaze carries the quiet ache of being made a guest in the home that raised her.
Wet Paint captures a friend who has long faded into the background ¨C always second to her brother, her voice dismissed, her efforts unnoticed. Her portrait dissolves into an ethereal haze; she no longer resists, not out of acceptance, but from knowing it will never be heard.
Photographs: Anna Kucera
Acknowledgement of Country
аIJʹÙÍø School of Art & Design stands on an important place of learning and exchange first occupied by the Bidjigal and Gadigal peoples.
We acknowledge the Bidjigal and Gadigal peoples as the Traditional Custodians of the land that our students and staff share, create and operate on. We pay our respects to Elders past and present and extend this respect to all First Nations peoples across Australia. Sovereignty has never been ceded.
