CATHAY PACIFIC: STUDIO IN THE SKY

‘Architect and artist Justin Hui tours Hong Kong and the memory of his grandmother, rebuilding the past through travel with Cathay Pacific.’

Based between New York and Hong Kong, architect and visual artist Justin Hui has shaped his practice around reconstructing spaces through memory and archives – exploring how our identity, imagination and understanding of the past are influenced by form. Returning to Hong Kong, his most recent work has taken him deep into the tapestry of his own family history, reconstructing his grandmother’s memories, lost to dementia, for his project Searching for Poon.

Journeying through the streets of Hong Kong and his personal archives, Hui tours mind and memory against the city’s landscapes for a short documentary Studio in the Sky, directed by Max Hemming and created with Cathay Pacific. Just as Hui transforms fragments into cohesive narratives on the ground, his time in the air becomes an extension of this creative process with the launch of Cathay Pacific’s new inflight experience, the Aria Suite.

“When my grandmother began losing her memory, her photographs became clues to a history I never knew. I used her images to trace her journey to Hong Kong, imagining around the fragments of her life. In the absence of her past, I became the architect of her memories.”

- Justin Hui

In the Aria Suite, artistry takes flight in parallel to Hui’s imagination. On an emotional sojourn across Hong Kong, Hui’s research and the travel that initiates it become a literal and metaphorical bridge between land and sky, past and present. While family photographs illuminate the landscape of memory through his grandmother’s life in the city, the suite’s thoughtful design fosters mental clarity and free-thinking, allowing Hui space to reflect, unwind and imagine new worlds at altitude.