'A 5-hour long live performance created within my 2026 solo exhibition, he remained blindfolded and under the guise of of the Buddhism deity, Avalokiteśvara. With vision deprived, Yuen repeatedly grind ink in a progressively aggressive manner, allowing it to slowly fill up the container situated beneath his seat: a container with the Heart Sutra, the most common prayer in Buddhist culture, laser cut atop.

The romanticised behaviour of putting religious gestures before personal benefits is common in Asian cultures. No matter how small your house is (more likely to be a small apartment in Hong Kong’s horrendous housing situation), if you are living with a family member of the older generations, you are very likely to share the same crowded living space with a dark red, typically wooden shrine of many ornaments. And no matter how poor you are, you will find the money to buy and offer incense and fresh fruits to the immovable. During big holidays like the Mid-Autumn Festival, we even make a whole chicken as a sacrificial honour to the gods that protected us throughout the year.

A lot of the deities that take our offerings are not even actual figures from religious booklets, but instead high beings from folklore that people were told to devote their lives to. You shouldn’t step on the sill of a door because that would upset the god that guards it; you should always say ‘excuse me’ when you pee in a bush because the god of land might be there; you do not point your fingers at the moon because it is disrespectful to the immortals that inhabit there, otherwise your ears will be cut off. These cultural traditions thrive on fear-mongering, and passed on from generation to generation, to a point where no one really understands why we have to follow rules made up by gods we don't necessarily believe in.

What is the reason for saying prayers when your Messiah did not promise you an ending? I understand the cynical nature of this thought, but you cannot argue that it is not reasonable. Growing up in a household that accommodates statues of Buddhist gods, I have every reason to question the tradition of blindly believing in an icon, when it brought me fear far more than comfort. 

In a world where nothing makes any human sense, is it that absurd for people to stop believing in prayers?