Season Lao

Season Lao was born and grew up in Portuguese Macau in 1987 and experienced life after the handover to China. He graduated from Macao Polytechnic University with a bachelor’s degree of the Faculty of Art and Design. While a student, He researched the changes in local culture of both Portuguese and Chinese communities and engaged in activities such as video archiving.

One of his works “Pateo do Mungo (百年菉荳圍)” was about a group of historical buildings, including his birthplace, that date back to the Qing Dynasty. These buildings were originally scheduled to be demolished, but the demolition was canceled due to the response to his work. “Pateo do Mungo” is now part of the collection at the Macao Museum of Art and was invited to participate in the Macau pavilion at the “14th China Pingyao International Photography Festival” by the Museum.

In 2009, Lao moved to Hokkaido, Japan. At first he was invited to Hokkaido by a local design company. The next year, following the Great East Japan Earthquake, He went independent and started to visit and participate on projects to explore abandoned natural areas such as the coal mine area of Yubari. In 2016, He was invited to work on a Sapporo Snow Festival project which installed a 14-meter high snow sculpture of the ruins of St. Paul’s, a symbol of Macau in Sapporo.

At this time, He developed his series “Natural Emptiness” which is based on his experience during a blizzard. This series seeks to capture the “interdependence of emptiness and reality” in natural phenomena such as snow and fog with a focus on this phenomena in pristine nature. As part of the collection at The Ritz-Carlton Fukuoka, Lao was invited to create a site-specific work “Winter Pine Trees in Genkai Landscape (寒松玄海圖)” consists of dyed threads in the entrance of the building.

In 2019, Lao moved to Kyoto. He created the installation and performance series “Kyoshitsu Shohaku – An Empty Room Turns White For Enlightenment (虛室・生白)” The title refers to a quotation by Zhuangzi 莊子 (Chuang-Tzu, 369—298 BCE) and was further experimentation with the idea of “undivided nature of subject and object” which he started working with in “Natural Emptiness.” His works are seen as making contributions to ecology and philosophy by scholars. His works are collected by Museum of Asian Arts in Nice, France where he held a solo exhibition “Une pièce vide devient blanche pour l’illumination Par Season Lao” in 2023. His installation was invited to the Nishida Kitarō Museum of Philosophy by The University of Tokyo (2024).

Lao’s artworks is publicly collected widely in Japan by groups such as the Chishima Foundation and individuals including Setsu Niseko and Aya Niseko. In the collection of Nipponia Mino Shokamachi, His artwork was installed in the middle of a historical tea room to reflect the interconnectedness of the yin-yang relationship.

He is also widely exhibited overseas including “L’Uomo nel Paesaggio” and publication San Pietro in Atrio, Como, Italy (2015), “Pontes Aladas” Museu do Chiado, and “Everything is still“ at the Elizabeth de C. Wilson Museum Vermont, US (2019). Archives of his work have been collected by The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Guimet Museum, Cernuschi Museum, Bpi Centre Pompidou, The National Art Center, Tokyo, National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Korea, Gulbenkian Foundation, and Asia Culture Center (Gwangju).