Hilde Mertens
Contemporary Chinese Calligraphy
My journey through western oil painting, portraiture and pencil drawings and seeing the works of Brice Marden, Cy Twombley and Mark Rothko led me to a single question:
Is a single line still art?
That question drew me into the world of thousands of years of Chinese calligraphy. It‘s a world with its own boundaries, where one line is not only form but energy, rhythm and emptiness. Here "beautiful writing" stands at the pinnacle of artistic expression, where Buddhist and Daoist philosophies, merges with ink, poetry and mind.
From here, new questions emerge: how far can we break apart the past to shape new narratives and stories to express ourselves now? Where do the boundaries of meaning and culture truly lie?
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Born in Belgium and now calling Hong Kong and Asia home, a wonderful place where East and West meet in rhythm and contrast.
With a master’s in Chinese and Economics and fluency in five languages, including Mandarin, I began my career in Beijing. From there, I have worked across Beijing, Singapore, London, and Hong Kong in investment and private banking before transitioning into management consulting as a high-performance leadership expert. While nurturing my passion for art.
I am an alumna of Oxford’s Saïd Business School and Board Member of Lingnan University and hold a certificate in mediation from the University of Hong Kong.
Set your mind free, remain steady and precise, explore, break the rules, and allow the brush to move. Listen to the universe’s ceaseless urge to transform the old into the new. Merge boldness with elegance. Reject formality. Yet always with discipline, unrelenting practice and study. Look back in time but keep moving forward.
"po" to disrupt,



press
S Magazine, January 2024
The HK Club News, April 2023
The HK Club News, April 2024
The Belgium-Luxembourg CC HK magazine
The Standard, May 2025

