A landmark collaboration between museums across the Greater Bay Area has resulted in Macao’s largest ever exhibition of export paintings – a genre offering glimpses of southern China during the 18th and 19th centuries, tailored for the foreign market.
Bringing the total number of protected cultural heritage sites in the city to 165, these special buildings include Português Suave residences, the former home of Sun Yat-sen’s first wife, and the city’s most consequential abattoir.
Local artists Lai Sio Kit and Leong Chi Mou are members of the Macau Youth Art Association. In their most recent exhibition at Tap Seac Gallery, they offered two very different creative interpretations of their city.
At age 70, Lei Iat Po believes he’s the youngest Guangcai porcelain master left in Macao. And he’s working hard to keep his beloved craft – and a beautiful piece of the territory’s cultural heritage – alive.
The artist Wong Weng Cheong found inspiration in an Italian novel and English landscapes for his biennale installation, “Above Zobeide”, an exploration of introversion.
Through a few choice characters carved into granite, boundary stones offer glimpses into past iterations of Macao’s Chinese communities. Historical researcher Tam Chon Ip has been tracking down these previously undocumented markings for over a decade – a mission that’s become a race against urban development.
The Macao Museum of Art showcases Tibetan Buddhist treasures that were gifts exchanged between the Qing court and successive Panchen Lamas in Xizang.
Members of the Macau Numismatic Society are all avid collectors of money, though not as legal tender. For them, the value of coins and banknotes lies in their ability to tell a story of the past.
For the past 80-odd years, Chion Chau café has borne witness to the ebbs and flows of Macao. Today, it’s run by a father-and-son team who are moving with the times while remembering the past.
Bamboo has long been used in Macao’s construction industry, primarily as scaffolding. But as this eco-friendly material gradually gets replaced by steel, there are people fighting for its inclusion in a wider range of building activities.