[Latest update 15/07/2026]

Anita’s art is vegan, biodegradable, relational (as in “non-transactional”), and 99% analog – except the following 1%.

Every artistic endeavor is situational and ephemeral: spontaneously co-created in/with real life, and gracefully left to “die“ – transform, decay, compost, rot, evaporate, and be forgotten, reused, recycled, repurposed, re-homed, re-appropriated … or lost.

This includes – i.e. resists – the arbitrary bureaucratic protocols that the abominable “art industry” – which is not invited to this party – calls “documentation”. And the neoliberal, transactional, proprietary, and oppressive professionalization of creativity it upholds.

MEDIA in alphabetical order: art residencies, bodies, books, care, collective consciousness, colors, communities&commons, crochet, critical theory and practice, dance, Death, discourse, earthlings, embroidery, food, friends, gifts, grief, hair, interactions, knitting, Magic, mending, music, Nature, needles, pain, paint, paper, performance, people, periods, photography, plants, presence, public spaces, questioning, relational installations, relationships, resistance, room installations, silence, slideshows, Southern-Italian witchcraft, stillenss, tarots, tattoos, translations, “trash”, text&textiles, threads, videos, weaving, words.

BOOKED UNTIL August 2026 | Next Up: P.E.R.I.O.D. residency with Pang Jing (AKA the Red Witch) at FURNACE, Hong Kong.

HAIRY SITUATIONS | 牽一毛而動全身 [pull a hair and all body shakes]

13-27th May 2025 | New Moon Art Residency @performance_art_furnace_hk
9/F Foo Tak Building, Art&Culture Outreach (ACO)
Life Drawing @PangPangDrawingClub
Slideshow from @terra.attic
Ink @mujun.tat
Press @enidtsui & @artfutureclub
Analog Catalogue deposited @asiaartarchive
Photos by me & Kumi @drumjamhk
Inspiration @alokvmenon

Hairy situations are an inescapable feature of those born and growing hairy in the battlefield of a non-cis-het-male queer body, moving or class-passing at the margins of Whiteness’ racialization. We are soon and painfully made aware of our bodies’ deviation from normative “beauty” standards through shame, and quickly enroll in the Billion dollar industry of hair concealment and removal. Or not. While the shaming is direct, sharp and public, the complex negotiation between joining the industry or participating in the resistance is first of all a silent – not quiet – journey within, and then a marginal, marginalized and de/marginalizing conversation taking place, in whispers, behind closed doors. Or not. In Hairy Situations, a safe space where the invisible becomes visible and the whisper audible is opened and co-created: for these stories to take the center stage, for dissenting voices to get louder, and for disobedient practices to be honored. Body hair is as private as it is social, personal as it is political.

Hair—body hair, facial hair, hair of all kinds—carries a surface-level cultural symbolism that represents primitiveness, power, and wildness, whereas the absence of hair symoolizes purity, perfection, and flawlessness. Throughout history, the first step in regulating any group has often involved controlling their hair. Organizations that prioritize “discipline,” such as the military, schools, and prisons, have consistently imposed uniform hairstyles to enforce conformity.

In today’s urban landscape, beauty advertisements have become a mirror of contemporary aesthetic ideals. Attributes like fair skin, smoothness, and poreless perfection are upheld as the ultimate standards of “beauty,” while hairlessness, wrinkle-free skin, and unblemished features are celebrated as markers of “perfection.” However, behind these ideals lies the pervasive influence of consumerism. “Beauty” is defined by capital, with corporations stoking anxieties about not being beautiful enough while simultaneously selling solutions: “You’re not pretty enough! Buy our beauty services, and you’ll become beautiful!” People unwittingly fall into this consumerist trap, striving to eliminate every feature deemed unfit for the label of “beauty.”

“Hair Situations”, a two-week artist residency and exhibition by Anita, aims to challenge and redefine the preconceived notions of [hair]. The exhibition explores the intersection of the body, cultural symbols, and creative interventions, seeking to dismantle conventional beauty standards. It reveals how deeply ingrained stereotypes shape our everyday lives. Step into this space and join the conversation.

毛髮的處境是一個無法逃避的特徵，特別是那些出生並在非順性別異性戀男性的酷兒身體內成長、並在白人化種族邊緣隱現或跨越階級的人。我們很快且痛苦地意識到自己的身體偏離了規範化的「美」標準，透過羞恥感領悟到這一點，並迅速投入到價值數十億的脫毛產業中。或者，也可以不這麼做。雖然羞辱直接、尖銳且公開，但在選擇加入這個產業，還是參與抵抗之間的複雜協商，首先是一場內心無聲——但不安靜——的旅程，隨後是一場邊緣化、被邊緣化或去邊緣化的對話，這對話以低語形式在關閉的門後進行。或者，也可以不這麼做。

在《牽一毛而動全身》中，一個讓隱形變得可見、讓低語變得可聽的安全空間被開啟並共同創造：讓這些故事成為焦點，讓不同的聲音變得更響亮，並讓不服從的實踐受到尊崇。毛髮既是私密的，也是社會的；既是個人的，也是政治的。

毛，毛髮，體毛；毛的表層文化符號代表著原始、力量、野性；無毛則代表純潔、無瑕、完美。歷史上，如要監管群體的首項規訓，必先對其頭髮有所控制，軍隊、學校、監獄等，以「紀律」為上的組織，必先規管統一髮型。反之，如對頭毛加以改造染色，將被視為標奇立異的「叛逆」之舉。

當下城市中的美容廣告，成了時代審美觀的縮影: 白皙、光滑、零毛孔被奉為「美」的終極標準，無毛、無皺紋、無疤痕則被塑造成「完美」的標誌。然而，這種審美背後，無不透露著消費主義的影響。所謂的「美」被資本定義，商家一邊強化「你不夠美」的焦慮，一邊推銷各種美容服務：「你唔夠靚呀！買左我哋公司既美容服務，就會變靚架啦！」於是，人們不自覺地掉入這消費陷阱，努力剔除身上那些被視為「不屬於美」的特徵。

《牽一毛而動全身》，為期兩星期的藝術家(Anita)駐留展覽，將反轉你對於[毛]的固有看法及定義，探索身體、文化符號和創作介入之可能性，試圖瓦解那些約定俗成的美感標準，揭示刻板印象如何深刻地塑造我們的日常經驗，歡迎來到這空間展開對話。

PERENNIAL&ITINERANT&COLLECTIVE ART PERFORMANCE

[Since 2014]

In my pre-teens I used to play a game with a few of my school mates.
We would gather in the school yards, on the large concrete steps facing the asphalt sport ground. A bright red metal fence – or was it just red from the rust? – separated us from the archeological “Parco degli Acquedotti”, we could hear the Great Ring Road traffic, not too far away, making us Romans by less than a kilometers.
The game was: anyone would share a dream they had the previous night, and everyone would comment, interpret, offer advice, nod in a solemn way, or mock it ruthlessly. The more we did it, though, the more we steered toward solemnity rather than mockery. A serious play for us.
We must have looked, from the outside, somehow similar to the circle of Aborigenal men sitting on the floor of the supermarket – where once a sacred tree stood, in Werner Herzog’s movie Where the green ants dream (1984). Just less self-collected and put together, leaning into the graceful scruffiness of deep youth.

I stopped playing the game abruptly, few days shy of my thirteenth birthday.

The thing is, I had grown intensely attached to this practice, the ritualization of it, the intimacy, the depth. I was mesmerized by the tales of my friends as much as they were mesmerized by mine. Moved by the elements we found common as much as by the individual twists and directorial quirks of everyone’s dream box. Most of all, I loved when askind questions about how the oniric symbols may connect or speak to our tiny daily lives, we would tap into something that felt true in a way few things did by then. There was surely an element of ego in “getting it right”, and my obsession with reading and writing gave me an articulatory advantage that would make adults blink profusely over my young age.

I also had come to look way older. And odd in a very specific way that felt familiar and authentic to me: my hair was waist-long, as full as a mane, wavy. A chestnut brown generously turning to copper with sun exposure, years before I was allowed the enhancement of henna. Curves were appearing around my petite rectangular frame. Colorful skirts were lengthening, their patterns swarming more and more intricately. I hadn’t been called a gipsy after being followed by racially nervous shop assistants yet at that point, but the word “witch” was becoming more and more a synonym of me. Internally and externally, it is fair to say.

Around our dreamy play, it became too much for me to handle. As someone was telling their dream, the interrogative gaze of our circle started going from the teller to me more and more often. Then being fixated on me entirely. If I did not feel like commenting, my ear and my nodding were no longer deemed sufficient to occupy a concrete seat. And the game started bleeding outside of the circle too. A friend would approache the school gate with an anxious nuance in their steps, inceding head-first while clenching on the straps of our impossibly heavy backpacks. In front of the school gate, they would raise darting eyes onto the small early birds crowd, find me, and blurting their dreams on my sleepy face, demanding for answers. From ritual this game was turning into performance.
I had answers, the true ones, increasingly often. A couple of so-called premonitions were enough to create way too much commotion around the presumed power I had. A power I had not asked for, nor cultivated, nor could control or desired to keep. So I quit.
And my new game became dating.

12 years passed, I am not in Venice for my Master’s degree in so-called “Asian Studies”. I became friends with G. another long-curly-haired witchy misfit – assigned male at birth, but way beyond that. They’ll go by Germanda, their battle-name, here. I would take the train to Padua – they couldn’t stand Venice after having studied there for their bachelor – and we would cook, listen to music, smoke dope, drink wine, study, read, and talk into the night. When we met in Nanjing, the next year, we translated the whole thing but the dope into the hottest summer I have ever experienced. This before I ruined our friendship with a violent outburst of carelessness that I still regret to this days. I look for them online from time to time, with even less success than someone may have looking for me. I owe them 200 euros, and 1000 apologies for my immaturity. I do. And I am sorry.

But I digress.

Germanda had a deck of tarots and was the first person who did a spread with me.
I do not have my stack of journals handy, and I do not remember what question I asked, nor what cards came up.
What I do remember is that, at the end of it all, G. sat back on one of those darkly enameled wooded chairs that belong to grandparents’ houses soon inherited and sooner rented rented out. Puffing out smoke they repeated what I just said: “First time, really?”, their arc-y eyebrows growing into more acute arcs. “But I didn’t do … I mean, once the cards were there you were quite autonomous, and read through it pretty much by your self. That’s when that middle-school game resurfaced.
“The mechanism is just the same, – I reflected – it is a conversation mediated by symbols, where we try to co-create meaning, to find something that feels true”.
Germanda nodded, pleased: “You get it. Why don’t you look into it a bit more?”. I told him why not, why I quit, and the power and the stares and so on. G. nodded again, smiling, and repeated: “But you get it. Why don’t you look into it a bit more?”.

So off I was, that next weekend, visiting my ex in Trieste and walking with him to Via Nordio, to the New Age Center – this place is ran by the same amazing community that has been organizing the Triskell Celtic Festival since the late 90s,
“I’m here to see some tarots”, I said to the lady behind the counter after crossing the stone arc frame. She gently explained she could give me their catalogues to consult, but could not let me touch the actual card decks, which I nodded to, having been informed by Germanda already.

The lady opened a foldabe little table, quietly dragged a chair next to it, lit a small candle. She then disappeared behind a curtain and came back with four large tarot catalogues that made a hiss when she dropped them on the table.
Tapping into a capacity to read the room that he has since lost, my ex said “Imma head out for a while”, and left.
I went through all the catalogues, page by page in the next hour and a half or so. Then I stood, compacting the pile of them on the counter, and said: “There are two decks of tarots I feel called to, only”. The lady kept smiling with curiosity. “One is the Corto Maltese deck” I said, opening one of the tarots’ catalogues I kept marking with one of my fingers at the corresponding page. “The other one is this”, I said opening another one. The lady took mental notice of the two decks and went off again behind the dark courtain.

She came back with one deck only. “The Corto Maltese one is sold out, but here is the Crystal Tarot” painted by Elisabetta Trevisan. I couldn’t open the box, but having it there felt quite momentuous. “How much?”, I asked. The lady checked and said “21 euros”. I reached into my bag and then into my wallet, were one 20 Euros blue bill and one single Euro coin rested. And off I was, “taroted”.

In a week or so, I was back at Germanda’s place. Showing off the deck that I had kept always with me, as if I had been re-united with a precious fragment of me that got lost in a previous life. I opened the cards on the dark oval-shaped table, trying to spread them in a neat curve, with a wiping movement that I still did not quite control. G. observed in siclence.
Then spoke, with his eyes first, in surprise mode.
I was about to ask what was “wrong” with the deck I had chosen, but they said: “You remember I told you I have a book about tarots? Just a little second-hand book I got in some flea market in Bologna?”, I nodded. “Well, let me get it for you”.
G. disappered into their room and re-emerged, radiant and with a triumphant air, just after. They placed the book on the table, next to the cards, with a snap. And it was the one book that Elisabetta Trevisan, the very painter of my Crystal Tarot deck had written.

While studying for my Master’s I managed to go back to Rome every five weeks on average, no matter what. First of all because I tremendously missed my sister. But another reason was to go and enjoy long, unscheduled days at my grandparent’s house, my safe and happy place. While setting up the table for lunch, without putting to much thought into it, I said to grandma “You know what’s new? I got a tarot deck and started reading tarots”. She replied with her usual, guttural “Manò!” (li. “No way!”), and then surprise turned into a knowing smile while she said: “You know who else does tarots in this family?”, and she replied while turning her knotty and bony finger to herself: “Me!”. “But you’ve never told me!”, I protested. “Well, you never asked! … until now”.
The impossibly tight bond between us clicked one gear tooth tighter than before.

Now it’s later.
A full twelve years cycle has been completed, enclosing my “tarot life” so far. A life full of joyful wisdom, always decisively pointing towards the bright side of every situation. Bees come when I read tarots outdoor, walking on my head or hands, or circling around me and the other reader. Because we read tarots together, spreading the cards on one side so that we see them the saying, no reverse. There is no connection that I have which another person misses. There is no knowledge I hold onto, which cannot be shared quickly enough to make the conversation horizontal. There is no unidirectional readership I do not benefit from, nor transactional service exchange. The game is here again. And here to stay.

Grandma died, on the physical plane. My sister and I took turns in keeping and trying to read her old Marsillaise deck, with dubious results. It was not “giving”, not “conceding”. Until I read it with my cousins: then it was as harp and as direct with that as she was. And it checked out. A “blood is thicker than water” believer, her deck only serves us for family matters, and is reluctant and refractary to anyone else.

I got another deck, too, now. The first one after a very exclusive and monogamic love. I felt ready to believe that there is enough love in the universe and in my heart to share it without ever doubting that it may grow scarce or end. Private property is theft.

[Taipei, September 5th, 2026]

Photo credits to my friends Kumi Masunaga from Drum Jam and Dina from Healing in Nature, and one who is no longer a friend and I’d rather not dwell on

Tarots