Hilde Mertens
Contemporary Chinese Calligraphy
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 Chinese calligraphy. Thousands of years back in time when pictographs glued image and word together and made a culture emerge in symbols. Never the same, always moving. It‘s a world where one line can represent everything.
Here "beautiful writing" is the pinnacle of artistic expression, where Buddhist and Daoist philosophy merges with ink, mind, energy, rhythm and emptiness.
It's a living vocabulary. An invitation to explore how cultures construct meaning and identity, which stories we hear.
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"po"
broken, Broken, torn, disruption, damaged, breaking forms to create new ones,
Sharing the stories that reveal moments when the familiar shifted, and all that I once knew or expected took on a different form. What appears may not be what you expect to find.
Born in Belgium, I call Hong Kong home, a vibrant meeting point of East and West.
With a master’s in Chinese & Economics and fluency in five languages, including Mandarin Chinese, I have worked across Beijing, London, Singapore and Hong Kong in Investment and Private banking. And later moved into management consulting, while continuing my journey as an artist. I am an alumna of Oxford’s Saïd Business School, a Board Member of Lingnan University, and hold a mediation certificate from HK University.

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

