Magazine-Winter-2025 - Flipbook - Page 33
Sau-mui Yung, Mapping, 1999. Lithography and screen printing, diptych, 76 x 114 cm.
It is her respect for the process, perseverance and
the wish to always challenge herself that led Yung
on multiple paths of creative practice, education,
research, writing and curating.
A Beacon for Advancing the Art of Printmaking in
Hong Kong
After graduating from The University of Alabama
in 1995, at the recommendation of Kakas, Yung
advanced her printmaking studies at the prestigious
Tamarind Institute of the University of New Mexico,
enrolling in the highly selective professional printer
training program. After the one-year intensive
training, she returned to Hong Kong in 1996.
Practicing printmaking, especially lithography,
requires a heavy-duty printing press and space that
is difficult and expensive to come by in the densely
populated world financial center. It prompted Yung
and a few artist friends to establish the Hong Kong
Open Printshop (HKOP) in 2000. At its inception,
Image courtesy: Sau-mui Yung.
the studio was a bare-bones 800-square-foot space
that the artists rented in a tenement building in
an older district. Over the years, Yung and her
colleagues ran workshops and community art
initiatives with the goal to promote and support
print art in Hong Kong.
The group’s relentless advocacy led to sustained
funding from the government. In 2015, they moved
into a 4,000-square-foot space furnished with
professional printmaking equipment. It also had a
gallery and archive, expanding HKOP’s mandates of
education and preservation of history.
Since 2012, Yung has been the program director
of HKOP, developing workshops and participating
in international cultural exchange programs to
introduce print art to local and global audiences.
She is a member of the Association of Print Scholars,
and she represents HKOP as the founding member of
the International Association of Printing Museums.
WINTER 2025
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