This summer, Octone Foundation invited families and young people to experience Open the Box 2026: Pleasant Place — Ryan Villamael. Through art, exhibition viewing, and hands-on making, participants explored the theme of belonging and the idyllic notion of a “pleasant place”.
Exhibition Information
Artist: Ryan Villamael
Curator: Veronica Wong
with Associate Curator Christy Chow and Coordinator Vanessa Wong
A quiet garden,
a floating island,
a hidden nest,
a place that lives on in memory.
Open the Box 2026: Pleasant Place with Ryan Villamael is a slow-growing, participatory program. Participants of all ages are invited to co-create a paper canopy that evolves over time – formed by multi-level suspended clusters that together become a shared, collective landscape.
Pleasant Place belongs to the Filipino artist Ryan Villamael’s ongoing Locus Amoenus series. In Latin, locus amoenus describes a “pleasant place” – a dreamlike pastoral landscape of refuge, abundance and harmony. This series explores history and collective memory, looking at the interpenetrating layers that constitute a locality and the invisible threads that connect us to it.
Participants are invited to wander through this immersive, forest-like environment, moving beneath and around floating foliage while actively contributing to the work’s growth. Through workshops, they will create clusters of leaves, vines or abstract terrain fragments, assembling small landscapes that reflect their own interpretation of a “pleasant place.”
It is a shared refuge shaped by many hands – a network of stories connected by migration and ideas of belonging.
Event Highlights
The program began with a guided exhibition tour led by Veronica Wong, Curator of Open the Box series at Tai Kwun. Families were introduced to the conceptual framework, creative process, and artistic significance of the exhibition, gaining deeper insight into Ryan Villamael's practice and the ideas behind Pleasant Place.
Following the tour, parents and children took part in a hands-on workshop. Using paper printed with maps, participants carefully cut petal-like forms to create delicate vines and foliage, infusing each handcrafted piece with their own creativity and personal expression. The completed works were then suspended throughout the exhibition gallery, becoming part of the evolving installation and bringing new warmth and collective presence to this immersive artistic landscape.
From experiencing the exhibition to creating artworks by hand, and from individual imagination to collective participation, the program embodied Octone Foundation's core mission: to nurture young people through art. By offering immersive artistic experiences, the Foundation encourages participants to relax, reflect, and expand their vision while discovering the joy of creativity, companionship, and personal growth, supporting the healthy and holistic development of young people.
About Tai Kwun Contemporary
Tai Kwun Contemporary is the non-profit visual art programme of Tai Kwun. Realising five to eight exhibitions a year and curatorially driven, Tai Kwun Contemporary presents and commissions artists from Hong Kong and beyond, while offering an extensive range of public programming as well as an extensive Asia-centred Artists’ Book Library. With the aspiration to contribute to and transform the experience and understanding of contemporary art in Hong Kong, Tai Kwun Contemporary is devoted to inspiring the Hong Kong public with an inquisitive attitude and committed to offering a conducive platform for learning and experimentation.