Searching for Poon by Justin Hui

Searching for Poon traces the journey of my grandmother, who is struggling with memory loss. I use her photographs and juxtapose them with my own, searching and reconstructing her journey from mainland China to Hong Kong.

A sheet of paper is folded into a book, creating the possibility for thousands of associations to be made. The book mirrors my perspective alongside hers, interwoven with motifs that echo on both ends. This nonlinear act of reading becomes an exploration of memory, akin to how one recalls the past. Photography, once a purveyor of objective reality, transforms into an exercise in imagining.

About Justin Hui

Trained in architecture, Justin reconstructs spaces and events from memory, archives, and imagination. These works explore how form shapes our understanding of history, experience, and identity.

Currently, he’s working on Searching for Poon, a project that reconstructs the fading memories of his grandmother. Other projects include documenting histories surrounding a disappeared hill in Hong Kong during the late Song Dynasty, and a self-fiction centered around sightings of unidentified flying objects in Phoenix, Arizona, in 1997.

Past projects include New Territories, which challenges colonial narratives and notions of boundary through the changing landscapes of Northern Hong Kong; Urban Africa, Made in China documents Chinese development across Africa and explores its influence on the continent’s urban future; Black Mountain, Red Earth chronicles the collapse of mining towns and the emergence of the multinational mining industry in the Zambian Copperbelt.

Justin is a registered architect in the State of Massachusetts. He works and lives in New York and Hong Kong.