Sammi Mak
Degree: MA Fine Art
University: University of the Arts London
Graduation Year: 2022
New Blood Art Commentary
Sammi Mak graduated in 2022. In the three years since, she’s had three solo shows, been included in more than 20 group exhibitions, and has already been acquired by Louis Vuitton. This is not typical.
Mak’s work is rooted in sensation, but finely held. Moving between oil, watercolour, and print, she works with delicacy and control - but the result is not restrained. The surfaces are alive. There’s a softness that holds voltage: a painterly field charged with memory, longing, and feeling just out of reach. Colour blooms without insistence. Space is left open. And what remains - what’s placed - is tuned with exactness.
In their restraint, these works make room for the viewer to feel. The references stretch widely: from the molecular to the mythic, from Japanese landscape painting to Anselm Kiefer’s nature studies. But the presence is unmistakably her own. A quiet almost ceremonial clarity.
This is a rare artist at the very beginning of a serious career.
Artist Statement
Living with a fragmental identity, I see painting as a language that affirms incompleteness and resists the linear narratives of reality. Through the lens of feminine writing, I embrace fluidity, non-linear rhythm, and intuitive expression as acts of survival and protection. The unfiltered vulnerability survived on the softness of the feminine landscape of desire I created.
Queerness runs through my practice as both an act of resistance and a carrier of desire, shaping visual spaces that slip between forms and open to mythic energy and incompleteness. Silence, trace of body, and the untranslatable, preserved after the exhilaration of love at its heart-tearing extremes.
Intuition homed the long lost fragment from my body, served as a sacred safe space, where the unseen surface naturally. We shall meet at this nonverbal space guided by intimacy, honesty and freedom.
Solo Exhibitions
(2024) The Dream Has Me, Swanfall Art, London, United Kingdom
(2023) Hong Kong Art Central Art Fair, Odds and Ends Gallery, Hong Kong
(2021) Dear Universe, Mak Wing Sum Sammi solo printmaking exhibition, Hong Kong Open Printshop, Hong Kong
Group Exhibitions
(2025) Arcus Pride Art Exhibition 2025, Voices of Pride, The Picturesque, Hong Kong
(2025) ART021 Shanghai Contemporary Art Fair, Swanfall Art, Shanghai, China
(2024) Playground, Swanfall Art, London, United Kingdom
(2024) Affordable Art Fair, Swanfall Art, London, United Kingdom
(2024) Hong Kong Art Central 2024, Odds and Ends, Hong Kong
(2024) AIA collection, AIA (Hong Kong), Hong Kong
(2024) Clifford Chance Hong Kong Arcus Pride Art 2024, Odds and Ends, Hong Kong
(2024) Elephant in the hat, Artbridger, Hong Kong
(2023) The Elegance Of Solitude, JPS Gallery, Hong Kong
(2023) Altar-native, Ugly Duck, London, United Kingdom
(2023) LOVE at Odds and Ends, Odds and Ends, Hong Kong
(2023) Phases of Matter, Gallery Exit, Hong Kong
(2023) ART021 Shanghai Contemporary Art Fair, Gallery Exit, Shanghai, China
(2023) The Elegance Of Solitude, JPS Gallery, Hong Kong
(2022) Affordable Art Fair, Odds and Ends Gallery, Hong Kong
(2022) Unveil, Swanfall Art, London, United Kingdom
(2022) Chapel / Factory, University of the Arts London, MA Fine Arts show, Copeland Gallery, London, United Kingdom
(2022) This Art Exhibition, Espacio Gallery, London, United Kingdom
(2022) Fai Chun Exhibition 2022, Odd One Out Gallery, Hong Kong
(2022) Featured Artist at True Global (London), Inhouse Art, London
(2022) Roll Call 1st Edition, Odds and Ends Gallery, Hong Kong
(2021) Mixed tape, UAL, London, United Kingdom
(2021) Up Close – Hollywood Road II, MUSTHAVEKEYS, Hong Kong
(2021) Dream with my eyes open, Duo art exhibition, Hapi, Hong Kong
(2021) Afterword I, Hong Kong Open Printshop, Hong Kong
(2021) BOOKED, Artbook pop-ups, Tai Kwun Contemporary, Hong Kong
(2020) Pressing On, Hong Kong Open Printshop, Hong Kong
(2019) HSBC private charity auction, HSBC, Hong Kong
(2019) Containing, Duo solo show, PMQ, Hong Kong
(2019) The New Art Now Exhibition, HKBU AVA Kai Tak Campus with Hong Kong Art Basel, Hong Kong
(2018) Good Times- Group Exhibition, Odd One Out Gallery, Hong Kong
(2018) Academy of Visual Arts BA Graduation Exhibition, Hong Kong Baptist University, Hong Kong
(2018) A Thin Booklet zine concept exhibition, Liaotistic, Hong Kong
Competitions, Prizes & Awards
(2020) HKOP Award in Printmaking 2020-2021
(2018) Hong Kong Baptist University, Academy of Visual Art Studies Collection
(2022) Featuring artist at True House, London
(2023) AIA (HK) Collection
(2025) Commissioned and collected by Louis Vuitton