Loretta Lau on ‘Nomad'

Loretta Lau, born in British Hong Kong, is a multidisciplinary artist and curator whose work sits at the intersection of art, politics and exile. Once an art teacher during Hong Kong’s turbulent post-handover years, she left the city in 2018 to study in Prague — and became one of the diaspora’s most outspoken artistic voices.

Her breakthrough performance, Letter to My People, debuted in 2019 at the DOX Centre for Contemporary Art, followed by Memory Eraser, a 24-hour protest piece staged at Prague’s National Theater. Her art, grounded in resistance and identity, has since drawn international attention, with features in The Diplomat, Sankei Shimbun and Global Voices.

In 2021, Lau took the helm of NGO DEI, a cultural nonprofit preserving Hong Kong’s creative heritage abroad. Under her leadership, the organization launched a Ukrainian Center after the 2022 invasion, and hosted exhibitions across Europe and beyond.

In 2024, Lau launched Art and Culture Hong Kong, the first symposium of exiled Hong Kong artists and thinkers, held at Nieuwspoort in The Hague — a powerful signal of a culture in exile, and relocated the NGO DEI to the Netherlands at the same year.