Performers in Residence | Hong Kong Exile

Group portrait in black and white of performers in Hong Kong Exile

Hong Kong Exile, Photo: Vancouver Art Gallery

From January to May 2025, Vancouver–based, interdisciplinary arts company Hong Kong Exile worked in residence at the Vancouver Art Gallery to develop a new work, culminating in the world premiere of their performance HEAVEN FM (2025).

In HEAVEN FM, five artists journey towards the edge of a universe that is teeming with spirit and sound. Equipped with low-tech gear, they attempt connection—tuning in and out of otherworldly stories. The absurd is juxtaposed with the sublime; the comedic revealed within the sacred. Powered by joy, grief and battery-operated magic, HEAVEN FM dances with the unseen and the ever-shifting gravity of loss.

HEAVEN FM is born from Co-Artistic Director Natalie Tin Yin Gan’s reflections on Chinese ancestral ritual in the modern, digitized era. Weaving together dance, theatre and multimedia performance, this collectively devised work is informed by Hong Kong Exile’s thirteen years of exploring technological interactivity in performance.

HEAVEN FM is being presented as part of the Gallery’s Asian Heritage Month programming, and this residency is an initiative of the Centre for Global Asias. Through this program, the Gallery provides studio space and technical/administrative support to enable artists to develop their artistic visions.

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ABOUT THE ARTISTS

Hong Kong Exile is a Vancouver–based, interdisciplinary arts company made up of three contemporary artists: Natalie Tin Yin Gan, Milton Lim and Remy Siu. The three have been consistently creating and producing work since 2011, developing a reputation as an engaged, rigorous and prolific arts company. Since its inception, Hong Kong Exile has created thirteen original works presented in dance, theatre, film/media and new music contexts across Canada and internationally. Projects over the last several years include an ambitious month-long gallery exhibition, presentations at CanAsian International Dance Festival, Prairie Theatre Exchange, Dancing on the Edge Festival, Gaudeamus Muziekweek and PuSh International Performing Arts Festival, as well as various collaborative international initiatives. Hong Kong Exile aims to create vital and innovative performance drawing from their diasporic experiences as first-generation Chinese-Canadian settlers. The company values pushing beyond the conventions of their respective disciplines, seeking expressions/aesthetics that evoke the strange and speculative as much as they speak to contemporary political realities.

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