Overview
Borrowed from manuscript restoration, the term palimpsest describes a surface written, erased, and rewritten—where earlier traces remain visible beneath later layers. For Leelee Chan, this structure offers a way to understand sculpture as a site where biological, geological, industrial, and cultural temporalities are permanently entangled, challenging us to ask: what knowledge resides not only in human intention but also in the traces we leave behind?
Hybrid Palimpsests, her first museum solo exhibition, brings together works developed over the past seven years alongside three new outdoor sculptures, Blindfold Receptor (Milionia Zonea), Blindfold Receptor (Xanthodes) and Blindfold Receptor (Spotted Skipper) (all from 2026), conceived for the space. Each work presents its own hybrid palimpsest, articulating three interwoven concerns: transformation, layered temporality, and material memory. Together, these concerns propose a non-anthropocentric way of perceiving—one that questions human-centric assumptions about growth, progress, and what constitutes intelligence.
Chan's sculptural language emerges from sustained material research into the ubiquitous found objects and industrially manufactured elements that populate urban infrastructure. Attentive to both their physical properties and cultural histories, her work moves across a wide spectrum of making—from historical craftsmanship to advanced manufacturing—incorporating these processes as conceptual material as much as physical technique. This approach reasserts the hand within mechanical systems, restoring intimacy to industrial form. Central to Chan's inquiry is a fascination with how human history is woven into the materials we produce and discard: how desire and imagination govern the meanings ascribed to objects, and how geography and culture mutually inscribe one another through the things we make.
Working with urban debris, industrial components, organic materials, and fragments of ancient artifacts, Chan subjects found materials to carving, casting, inlaying, and reconfiguration. These interventions do not erase prior functions; instead, they retain embedded histories while generating new formal relationships. Through this process, Chan examines how materials register labor, extraction, trade, belief systems, and environmental change—revealing the entanglement between matter and human constructs of advancement. Each object carries traces of its cultural origin and geographical movement, its symbolic meaning accruing and shifting across time. What emerges is a material record of how value is ascribed, forgotten, and reclaimed.
Transformation operates as both biological and spatial logic within the exhibition. Drawing on the life cycle of caterpillar, chrysalis, and moth—evident in her wall-mounted Chrysalis (2026), Moth (Emperor) and Moth (Pink-lined Sphinx) (both 2024), and Blindfold Receptor series (2026)—Chan approaches metamorphosis not as spectacle but as gradual reconfiguration. References to insects appear discreetly within the architectural space, sometimes positioned above eye level or partially concealed, prompting viewers to adjust their gaze and move attentively. Forms unfold incrementally as one moves through the space, mirroring processes of concealment, exposure, and renewal. Moreover, Blindfold Receptor (2026) purposefully connects the inside and outside of the museum space.
The Blindfold Receptor series was inspired by the camouflaging capabilities of the peppered-moth caterpillars, which were the subject of recent scientific studies highlighting the limits of human knowledge of their co-inhabitants. Due to the rapid changes in their environment since the industrial revolution, caterpillars acquired the ability to mimic the colour of the branches they inhabit, even when “blindfolded”, i.e., without using their eyes. Having evolved a mechanism to gain visual information about their surroundings, scientists discovered that caterpillars can “see” with their skin and alter their colors accordingly, making their skin at once a site of perception and transformation for tactile and visual data. In a fantastic hybridity of industrial materials, Chan imagined that twigs and branches become metal columns reminiscent of the dense skyscrapers of Hong Kong, and the caterpillars morph into multiple-directional rollers (omni-wheel). Like the caterpillar’s variegated ways of ‘seeing’ and changing color, these omni-wheels evolved from a long lineage of wheels, dating back to the Stone Age, to move in all directions in smooth-rolling motions. Omni-wheels have since been widely adapted in robotics, manufacturing and logistics to improve productivity and efficiency.
Questions of temporality extend beyond biological cycles into geological and industrial timeframes. In Shapeshifter (Volva) (2025), a hand-carved black stone shell encloses a stainless-steel spiral structure. The spiral—commonly associated with organic growth—also recalls industrial drilling tools used in mineral extraction. By inserting a mechanically produced metal core within hand-carved stone, Chan undermines distinctions between natural and artificial, craft and industry, proposing instead a continuum in which geological time and technologies evolve together. Alluding to the shapeshifting ability of mollusks, the sculpture offers a counterpoint to accelerated models of development, subtly questioning how ideas of progress are materially inscribed onto the earth.
This inquiry continues in Maker's Egg Cases (2026), where dense clusters of zinc-plated hex nuts, tinted glass, and scaled-up plastic egg cases cast in bath stone powder accumulate into a structure that holds biological, industrial, and geological time in suspension. The iridescent surfaces of the hex nuts and blue glass discs shift with changing light, evoking ocean membranes and the toxic sheen of spilled gasoline. Drawing a parallel between industrial repetition and marine reproductive structures, Chan points to a shared drive toward protection and efficiency. Human designs prioritize mobility and stackability, mirroring the circular economy's demand for optimized flow. Lightning whelks, by contrast, adapt in response to changing conditions—their forms shaped not by desire but by necessity, not by markets but by survival.
Material culture and the underland form another key axis of the exhibition. Across the Present Relics series (2019–2025) and the bronze sculpture Wood Wide Web (Unearth), Chan delves into what lies beneath: hidden systems, buried histories, and the material interconnections between the natural and the artificial. Cast in lost wax from manipulated fragments of found shipping pallets, Wood Wide Web (Unearth) draws inspiration from mycorrhizal networks—the underground fungal threads that allow trees to communicate—creating a poetic parallel to the above-ground global economies that pallets enable. Its patina recalls ancient Chinese bronzes, its forms suggest roots, bridging the architectural with the organic and casting light on invisible infrastructures both ecological and industrial.
The Present Relics series extends this inquiry into non-linear temporality. Drawing on her upbringing among Chinese antique dealers and restorers—particularly her familiarity with mingqi, ancient burial objects—Chan reconfigures fragments of these ceramics with contemporary urban detritus, industrial components, and organic matter. Past, present, and future collapse into singular, precariously balanced works that fuse disparate elements into interlocking forms. Here, the underland becomes a site where belief systems, memory, and desire are preserved and reactivated—cultural time not closed but layered, continuous, and alive.
Double Passage (Verdigris) (2024) draws upon Chan's deep familiarity with Chinese artifacts, reimagining the ancient jade bi disc—a form that has appeared in her work since 2019 as she began exploring her personal relationship with Chinese antiquities and non-linear temporality. Used since the Neolithic period for ritual and ornamental purposes, the bi disc traditionally symbolized a connection between earth and heavens, often placed in graves as a portal between realms. Here, two onyx discs rest upon a shipping pallet, their alignment shifting with the viewer's perspective and activating the space around them. The structure is flanked by vertically oriented bumper packaging, coated in epoxy clay to resemble patinated pillars—industrial materials transformed into something ancient-seeming. In the absence of a human body, Chan's bi discs invoke more abstract flows of energy between artwork and environment, embodying the artist's conviction that all objects possess a form of life beyond what can be comprehended.
Growing up with parents who restored and traded ancient Chinese antiques, Chan developed an early fascination with how human history is woven into the materials we use to build and advance civilization. In 2019, this inquiry carried her across the world on a BMW Art Journey in search of what she calls "tokens from time"—objects and materials that have left deep traces on the arc of human society. Learning from the communities who mine, craft, and engineer these materials—absorbing knowledge of their past, present, and future—has since infused her practice with new conceptual and formal rigour.
Dark Light, Subterranean Circuit (2023) distils the artist's experiences from this journey. Plastic shipping pallets—long a recurring motif in Chan's practice and emblematic of Hong Kong's role as a global port—are reconfigured into architectural structures. Inlaid within them are rippled amber resin and gold-sheen obsidian, a naturally formed volcanic glass carved by local stoneworkers from Teotihuacán, a historic mining region in Mexico. The effect evokes the luminosity of stained glass in sacred spaces. Once used for tools and ritual objects in ancient Mesoamerica, obsidian was essential to pre-Columbian cultures—the "steel of the New World," transforming entire societies through its utility and symbolic power. Today, obsidian circulates under new economic and symbolic conditions, appearing as a commodity in feng shui arrangements. By embedding this ancient material into mass-produced transport devices, Chan reveals the continuity between sacred and secular architectures of extraction. By embedding this ancient material into mass-produced transport devices, Chan reveals the continuity between sacred and secular architectures of extraction. Industrial zinc-plated wheels, 3D-printed bronze wildflowers, and calcite orbs interlock the surface of the cratered floor piece, echoing elements in the wall piece. The cratered floor piece was sculpted in epoxy clay, resembling the texture of fossilized stone and open-pit mine, while beneath it lies an embedded copper-chrome mirror passage: a subterranean circuit threading through this manufactured geology.
Hybrid Palimpsests, her first museum solo exhibition, brings together works developed over the past seven years alongside three new outdoor sculptures, Blindfold Receptor (Milionia Zonea), Blindfold Receptor (Xanthodes) and Blindfold Receptor (Spotted Skipper) (all from 2026), conceived for the space. Each work presents its own hybrid palimpsest, articulating three interwoven concerns: transformation, layered temporality, and material memory. Together, these concerns propose a non-anthropocentric way of perceiving—one that questions human-centric assumptions about growth, progress, and what constitutes intelligence.
Chan's sculptural language emerges from sustained material research into the ubiquitous found objects and industrially manufactured elements that populate urban infrastructure. Attentive to both their physical properties and cultural histories, her work moves across a wide spectrum of making—from historical craftsmanship to advanced manufacturing—incorporating these processes as conceptual material as much as physical technique. This approach reasserts the hand within mechanical systems, restoring intimacy to industrial form. Central to Chan's inquiry is a fascination with how human history is woven into the materials we produce and discard: how desire and imagination govern the meanings ascribed to objects, and how geography and culture mutually inscribe one another through the things we make.
Working with urban debris, industrial components, organic materials, and fragments of ancient artifacts, Chan subjects found materials to carving, casting, inlaying, and reconfiguration. These interventions do not erase prior functions; instead, they retain embedded histories while generating new formal relationships. Through this process, Chan examines how materials register labor, extraction, trade, belief systems, and environmental change—revealing the entanglement between matter and human constructs of advancement. Each object carries traces of its cultural origin and geographical movement, its symbolic meaning accruing and shifting across time. What emerges is a material record of how value is ascribed, forgotten, and reclaimed.
Transformation operates as both biological and spatial logic within the exhibition. Drawing on the life cycle of caterpillar, chrysalis, and moth—evident in her wall-mounted Chrysalis (2026), Moth (Emperor) and Moth (Pink-lined Sphinx) (both 2024), and Blindfold Receptor series (2026)—Chan approaches metamorphosis not as spectacle but as gradual reconfiguration. References to insects appear discreetly within the architectural space, sometimes positioned above eye level or partially concealed, prompting viewers to adjust their gaze and move attentively. Forms unfold incrementally as one moves through the space, mirroring processes of concealment, exposure, and renewal. Moreover, Blindfold Receptor (2026) purposefully connects the inside and outside of the museum space.
The Blindfold Receptor series was inspired by the camouflaging capabilities of the peppered-moth caterpillars, which were the subject of recent scientific studies highlighting the limits of human knowledge of their co-inhabitants. Due to the rapid changes in their environment since the industrial revolution, caterpillars acquired the ability to mimic the colour of the branches they inhabit, even when “blindfolded”, i.e., without using their eyes. Having evolved a mechanism to gain visual information about their surroundings, scientists discovered that caterpillars can “see” with their skin and alter their colors accordingly, making their skin at once a site of perception and transformation for tactile and visual data. In a fantastic hybridity of industrial materials, Chan imagined that twigs and branches become metal columns reminiscent of the dense skyscrapers of Hong Kong, and the caterpillars morph into multiple-directional rollers (omni-wheel). Like the caterpillar’s variegated ways of ‘seeing’ and changing color, these omni-wheels evolved from a long lineage of wheels, dating back to the Stone Age, to move in all directions in smooth-rolling motions. Omni-wheels have since been widely adapted in robotics, manufacturing and logistics to improve productivity and efficiency.
Questions of temporality extend beyond biological cycles into geological and industrial timeframes. In Shapeshifter (Volva) (2025), a hand-carved black stone shell encloses a stainless-steel spiral structure. The spiral—commonly associated with organic growth—also recalls industrial drilling tools used in mineral extraction. By inserting a mechanically produced metal core within hand-carved stone, Chan undermines distinctions between natural and artificial, craft and industry, proposing instead a continuum in which geological time and technologies evolve together. Alluding to the shapeshifting ability of mollusks, the sculpture offers a counterpoint to accelerated models of development, subtly questioning how ideas of progress are materially inscribed onto the earth.
This inquiry continues in Maker's Egg Cases (2026), where dense clusters of zinc-plated hex nuts, tinted glass, and scaled-up plastic egg cases cast in bath stone powder accumulate into a structure that holds biological, industrial, and geological time in suspension. The iridescent surfaces of the hex nuts and blue glass discs shift with changing light, evoking ocean membranes and the toxic sheen of spilled gasoline. Drawing a parallel between industrial repetition and marine reproductive structures, Chan points to a shared drive toward protection and efficiency. Human designs prioritize mobility and stackability, mirroring the circular economy's demand for optimized flow. Lightning whelks, by contrast, adapt in response to changing conditions—their forms shaped not by desire but by necessity, not by markets but by survival.
Material culture and the underland form another key axis of the exhibition. Across the Present Relics series (2019–2025) and the bronze sculpture Wood Wide Web (Unearth), Chan delves into what lies beneath: hidden systems, buried histories, and the material interconnections between the natural and the artificial. Cast in lost wax from manipulated fragments of found shipping pallets, Wood Wide Web (Unearth) draws inspiration from mycorrhizal networks—the underground fungal threads that allow trees to communicate—creating a poetic parallel to the above-ground global economies that pallets enable. Its patina recalls ancient Chinese bronzes, its forms suggest roots, bridging the architectural with the organic and casting light on invisible infrastructures both ecological and industrial.
The Present Relics series extends this inquiry into non-linear temporality. Drawing on her upbringing among Chinese antique dealers and restorers—particularly her familiarity with mingqi, ancient burial objects—Chan reconfigures fragments of these ceramics with contemporary urban detritus, industrial components, and organic matter. Past, present, and future collapse into singular, precariously balanced works that fuse disparate elements into interlocking forms. Here, the underland becomes a site where belief systems, memory, and desire are preserved and reactivated—cultural time not closed but layered, continuous, and alive.
Double Passage (Verdigris) (2024) draws upon Chan's deep familiarity with Chinese artifacts, reimagining the ancient jade bi disc—a form that has appeared in her work since 2019 as she began exploring her personal relationship with Chinese antiquities and non-linear temporality. Used since the Neolithic period for ritual and ornamental purposes, the bi disc traditionally symbolized a connection between earth and heavens, often placed in graves as a portal between realms. Here, two onyx discs rest upon a shipping pallet, their alignment shifting with the viewer's perspective and activating the space around them. The structure is flanked by vertically oriented bumper packaging, coated in epoxy clay to resemble patinated pillars—industrial materials transformed into something ancient-seeming. In the absence of a human body, Chan's bi discs invoke more abstract flows of energy between artwork and environment, embodying the artist's conviction that all objects possess a form of life beyond what can be comprehended.
Growing up with parents who restored and traded ancient Chinese antiques, Chan developed an early fascination with how human history is woven into the materials we use to build and advance civilization. In 2019, this inquiry carried her across the world on a BMW Art Journey in search of what she calls "tokens from time"—objects and materials that have left deep traces on the arc of human society. Learning from the communities who mine, craft, and engineer these materials—absorbing knowledge of their past, present, and future—has since infused her practice with new conceptual and formal rigour.
Dark Light, Subterranean Circuit (2023) distils the artist's experiences from this journey. Plastic shipping pallets—long a recurring motif in Chan's practice and emblematic of Hong Kong's role as a global port—are reconfigured into architectural structures. Inlaid within them are rippled amber resin and gold-sheen obsidian, a naturally formed volcanic glass carved by local stoneworkers from Teotihuacán, a historic mining region in Mexico. The effect evokes the luminosity of stained glass in sacred spaces. Once used for tools and ritual objects in ancient Mesoamerica, obsidian was essential to pre-Columbian cultures—the "steel of the New World," transforming entire societies through its utility and symbolic power. Today, obsidian circulates under new economic and symbolic conditions, appearing as a commodity in feng shui arrangements. By embedding this ancient material into mass-produced transport devices, Chan reveals the continuity between sacred and secular architectures of extraction. By embedding this ancient material into mass-produced transport devices, Chan reveals the continuity between sacred and secular architectures of extraction. Industrial zinc-plated wheels, 3D-printed bronze wildflowers, and calcite orbs interlock the surface of the cratered floor piece, echoing elements in the wall piece. The cratered floor piece was sculpted in epoxy clay, resembling the texture of fossilized stone and open-pit mine, while beneath it lies an embedded copper-chrome mirror passage: a subterranean circuit threading through this manufactured geology.