Audrey Lai – SDCA Degree Show 2025

Degree Show: Find Me In My Headspace

Artist

Audrey Lai (b. 2004, Hong Kong) is a graduating artist from Loughborough University, based in both the UK and Hong Kong. Her mixed-media works are rooted in an autobiographical exploration of existential dissonance, delving into escapist mentalities during the transitional phase of coming of age. Drawing on themes of displacement, her paintings confront and divulge interpersonal dynamics, often engaging with the complexities of family tension brought about by both time and physical distance. Through the practice of world-building—an approach inspired by her fascination with graphic novels—emerges the visual presentation of an alter ego. MoMo serves as a cathartic tool to externalise the anxieties and challenges encountered on this transient journey toward adulthood, mediating an alternative reality that can never be fully realised in the real world.

The differential languages of paint give a multitude of cultural and expressionistic trajectories in the creation of dystopian scapes, and have fortified her adoration towards drawn and painted processes. In this exhibit Find Me In My Headspace, the three selected mixed-media works explore the complexity of family tension, shaped by both time and physical distance. In each piece, attempts at communication are depicted as fundamentally flawed or misconceived. The paintings, through their portrayal of uncanny bodily contortions, encode cryptic messages that address matters that remain unresolved.