Previewing Exhibition
“Coming full circle and making whole” is how Holly Wong describes her process of repair—working with memory, reassembling fragments, and layering paint, fabric, and light into new forms. On view at SLATE Contemporary in Oakland from September 5 through October 11, 2025, Full Circle is her second solo exhibition with the gallery. It brings together collaged paintings on shaped aluminum and wood panels, mixed media drawings, wall-based fiber and LED installations, and a heat-molded acrylic assemblage, presenting a mid-career survey of her work.
The exhibition moves between personal history and myth. In Mnemosyne Rising, Wong addresses trauma from her family background through collaged paintings made of oil, graphite, charcoal, and alcohol ink on canvas and paper. Each fragment is hand-cut and mounted onto shaped aluminum dibond with archival adhesives, creating surfaces where plant forms suggest growth and recovery. The series takes its name from the Greek goddess of memory, aligning Wong’s process of recall with her effort to reshape the past into something new.
Memory also informs Lethe’s Garden, a group of works on paper and wood panel that draws on the mythic river of forgetting. Here, ornate collages in gouache, ink, colored pencil, and graphite are built into dense, brightly colored compositions. Along the edges, faint graphite forms appear like erased or fading traces, introducing a tension between abundance and absence.
A related concern with change and continuity appears in Thalassa, a wall-mounted work made from laser-cut, heat-molded acrylic. The pieces are hand-colored, sewn, and attached directly to the wall, forming shapes that evoke the motion of water. Named for the primordial goddess of the sea, the work reflects Wong’s view of water as a metaphor for transformation.
This theme of reconstruction extends into Wong’s fiber practice. Deconstructed Quilt 1 combines silk and organza sewn with bojagi-inspired seams and layered with LED strip lighting and diffusion film. Suspended in space, the translucent fabric panels evoke Chinese mourning customs in which burial cloths are offered to the deceased. In this context, the work serves as a memorial to Wong’s mother, while also marking the role of fabric and ritual in preserving memory.
The Oakland exhibition connects directly to Wong’s participation in Karl: The Art of Fashion in San Francisco, where Deconstructed Quilt 2 and Body of Light—an eight-by-fifteen-foot suspended installation—will be shown in October. That exhibition brings together artists who explore the histories of textiles as labor, identity, and cultural inheritance. It will open with a fashion show and reception at Levi’s Plaza on October 3 from 6 to 9 pm.
Combining painting, collage, fiber, and installation, Full Circle traces a period of five years in which Wong has reoriented her practice and her relationship to memory and healing. Materials such as acrylic, organza, graphite, and alcohol ink are layered and combined into works where fragments are visibly repaired and assembled. The exhibition’s title points to this process of reconstruction and continuity.
Holly Wong: Full Circle opens September 5th at 6pm
SLATE Contemporary Gallery 473 25th Street, Oakland, CA 94612
Book launch: Saturday, September 20, 3-5pm
The exhibition runs through October 11, 2025