Does heritage only serve to record a bygone era and feed the nostalgia of those living in changing times? How can we collectively learn from the past and forge a better future?

In spring 2024, CHAT celebrates its 5th anniversary with the group exhibition Factory of Tomorrow. Featuring CHAT’s own contemporary art collection and newly commissioned works, it endeavours to critically examine the past and evoke imagination for what is to come. From textile works and sculptures to immersive installations and videos, it brings together creations by 19 artists and collectives of Asian backgrounds, reflecting their takes on textile technology and materials, diversity, climate change and our future.

Venue address: 45 Pak Tin Par Street, Tsuen Wan, N.T.

kat , felt, suzani, syrmak . . . All these traditional materials and technique along with their unique styles and ornaments make up the distinctive textile culture of Central Asia. Age-old textile practices permeate the political economy and serve as a medium for social life. Even in the current era of information technology, textile production is a deeply rooted part of many Central Asian peoples’ daily lives. Contemporary artists from this region also often use this textile culture for inspiration and as creative material to respond to political and social transformation, raising discussions around the preservation of traditions, the circulation of collective memory and how textiles can encourage unity within a community.

This exhibition takes textiles and crafts as the starting point for an in-depth exploration of this vast interconnected territory with its multi-layered politics, societies and cultures. The exhibition has two parts: Clouds and Power  co-curated by Slavs and Tatars and You Mi, and Suture: Reimagining Ornament  curated by Alexandra Tsay. The first part uses traditional ikat  as a metaphor to present the intricacies of Central Asia’s political and social landscape. The ‘bazaar-like’ exhibition design also paints a group portrait of Central Asian contemporary art. The second part focuses on Central Asian traditional ornamentation, exploring it as a language that both reflects and shapes politics, society and culture. Its focus on Central Asian female artists also reveals important powers that have been concealed by mainstream narratives.

Venue address: 45 Pak Tin Par Street, Tsuen Wan, N.T.

Absolute Blue: BUAISOU Works with Japanese Natural Indigo is the first comprehensive exhibition to introduce the works by BUAISOU, a young craft collective working with Japanese natural indigo. The exhibition will feature immersive installations of BUAISOU’s indigo works and introduce their unique farm-to-closet practices and innovative techniques through a display of their dyed works, tools and recreated studio space.

Based in Tokushima, BUAISOU pursues the craft of Japanese natural indigo dye through traditional fermentation methods. From cultivating, processing and fermenting indigo, to dyeing, most of their production procedures are performed manually using traditional methods. While upholding the revered traditions of the centuries-old craft, BUAISOU has pushed the boundaries of Japanese natural indigo dyeing beyond textiles and communicates with contemporary audiences through diverse collaborations with international brands and designers from Jimmy Choo, Tory Burch, NIKE, to Artek and more.

Venue address: CHAT/MILL6 Foundation
The Mills, 45 Pak Tin Par Street, Tsuen Wan, N.T

The exhibition We are Textile Culture Net! introduces highlights from three exhibitions presented by Textile Culture Net in the past; About ABOUT A WORKER (co-curated by Alessandra Tempesti and Elena Ianeselli from Lottozero), Common Threads (curated by Sjouk Hoitsma from TextielMuseum) and Your Things (curated by Marta Kowalewska from the Central Museum of Textiles in Łódź). CHAT responds to the highlighted works with selections from CHAT’s contemporary art collection and past projects, juxtaposing them to create new dialogues between these exhibitions and projects. Each work has been realised through collaboration with various communities such as refugees, the LGBTQ+ community, migrant workers and female prisoners.

Expanding the network to include diverse communities based in Hong Kong, half of CHAT’s galleries are transformed by the Learning and Community team into a communal space for a series of workshops as part of CHAT’s ongoing community programme Seed to Textile. Inviting community members to take part in research and experimental workshops, the programme traces textile-manufacturing down to its origin through conducting artistic exercises to envision a sustainable future. This year, collaborators in this programme, or Seeders, include Breakthrough Art Studio, Elizabeth Briel, Eastman Cheng, Hao Lap Yan Benjamin, Ma Wing Man and Pop & Zebra.

Venue address: 45 Pak Tin Par Street, Tsuen Wan, N.T.

Spanning the Winter 2021 and Spring 2022 Programmes, the Spinning East Asia series presented by CHAT explores and attempts to make sense of the socio-cultural complexity of East Asia through the multiplicity of textiles. Before the official launch of the exhibition series, a series of online sharing entitled Following Traces will invite a few participating artists from the exhibition, as well as researchers and fellow speakers to share their thoughts, investigations and creative processes as they worked on these new projects. The speakers will trace the source of their ideas, their moments of inspiration and challenges they have encountered in a colloquy that will give rise to further discussion and creation, and open up the floor to invite audience members to pose questions and responses.

For full Programm and registration please refer to the website

This Spring, CHAT proudly presents Interweaving Poetic Code, an exciting collection of new seasonal programmes, including large-scale interactive installations, hands-on ‘unlearning stations’, an online discussion forum, performances and more tied to the themes of code, textile and care.

For this season, we have invited renowned educator, writer, artist and activist Taeyoon Choi to be the Artistic Director of Interweaving Poetic Code. His multifaceted practices of computation critically examines the systems embedded in the technology surrounding us while exploring alternative ways of shaping an inclusive society with the idea of care.

Joining him in this explorative journey of coding in textile(s) are fellow artists Aarati Akkapeddi, Andreas Angelidakis, Laura Devendorf, Christine Sun Kim, KOBAKANT, Amor Munoz and Rebirth Garments.

Venue address: The Mills, 45 Pak Tin Par Street, Tsuen Wan

The Mills curated the “Nice to Meet You Kapok!” exhibition, in which kapok trees serve as an introduction to community study and a reminder to all of us to live our lives mindfully. The people on the street come and go, leaving the beautiful trees unnoticed. Collaborating with several art units and local shops, the exhibition is going to showcase kapok trees in Hong Kong and its usage in our livelihood.

After entering The Mills from the Pak Tin Par Street entrance, take the lift upstairs. Visitors are greeted with the kapok-glass work by Maoshan Connie and Caritas Jockey Club Artkids Studio. Walk straight ahead and enter the atrium on the first floor, there is a textual work quoted from Chan Wai’s short story on the memories and imaginations of kapoks. The shop window of Europa Tea Foundry displays the prints by local printing artist Lam King Ting on the relations between kapok trees on Pak Tin Par Street and the pedestrians. Visitors can use rubber stamps and woodcut blocks to print their own kapok trees on papers and sow the seeds of friendship with kapoks.

In this solo exhibition hosted by CHAT (Centre for Heritage, Arts and Textile), the Chinese artist Yin Xiuzhen has created a spatial installation titled Sky Patch ·In Transit specifically for The Hall of The Mills. 20 suitcase-shaped artworks hanging in the air as well as several installations on the ground is going to recreate the ambience of the atrium of The Mills. These 20 hanging works constitute a patch of ‘sky’ stitched out of fabric, and on the ground beneath them are various installations reminiscent of airport facilities, creating a space similar to that of an airport terminal. Majority of the works are made by sewing together a large number of second-hand clothes, a material Yin frequently works with.

Venue address: CHAT, The Mills, 45 Pak Tin Par Street, Tsuen Wan

CHAT’s Winter Programme 2019 presents the fourth edition of the annual Discussion Forum, exploring the possibilities of textiles in different contexts. Staging Textiles: Shifting Contexts from Studio to Museum, brings together over a dozen speakers from Africa, Asia, Europe and North America, with backgrounds as varied as curation, academia, performance, contemporary art and fashion to examine questions of methodology and meaning in the presentation of textiles, ranging from conceptual issues to experimental forms, and introduces a range of diverse cases and challenges.

For details, schedule and to RSVP please visit website

Venue address: Fabrica Atrium, The Mills Fabrica, 4/F, The Mills