Para Site presents ‘Soft breath’, a solo exhibition of Trevor Yeung, co-commissioned in partnership with Gasworks, London; and Aranya Art Center, Qinhuangdao. Taking queer experiences that have shaped multi-species entanglements as a starting point, ‘Soft breath’ evokes the fluid interplay between night and day, public and private life, and hidden and visible desires.

Central to the exhibition is an ambitious, large-scale replica of the ‘fuck tree’—a leaning oak tree crucial to the life of a historic cruising ground popular in London since the 19th century. Reflecting on the fragile health and uncertain future of the tree, the artist employs light and scent as guiding elements to sculpt a temporary memory of a natural monument. To conjure up the tree’s original setting in a nocturnal woodland clearing, the gallery walls surrounding the sculpture will be painted in gradients to recreate the liminal, melancholic atmosphere in the moments just before sunrise. Meticulously recreated using soap, the tree will fill the 10F annex space with its fragrance, blending the natural and the artificial. The artist transforms the memory of the tree into a material that can be consumed or left to degrade over time, adding a dimension of impermanence and transience to the sculpture.

In Yeung’s carefully staged installations, the lives of plants are a medium to address notions of normativity and control within human social relations. Following the project’s journey from the first exhibition titled ‘Soft ground’ at Gasworks to its presentation at Para Site, ‘Soft breath’ will see Yeung recast the project by bringing into conversation the rituals of ‘wishing trees’ native to the New Territories in Hong Kong. Drawing on the convergence of histories and places where personal and collective desires meet, Yeung creates a stage to explore humanity’s entanglements with the natural environment.

‘Soft breath’ marks Yeung’s first major solo exhibition of 2024 in the lead-up to his representation of Hong Kong at the 60th Venice Biennale.