Clare Morin talks to the acclaimed Hong Kong artist in his tranquil Fo Tan studio

Your current exhibition at Para/Site is rather unusual – a documentation of art spaces?
The Para/Site project is a work in progress. It is about the spaces and people who work there. At first I started with domestic space … you can easily see the personality and character of people in domestic spaces, it’s a reflection of their own ideas. I found it interesting that in work spaces, it’s a mixture of public and private space. People tend to claim space or personalize it.

You travelled around the world to document the spaces?
Mainly in Asia. I was concentrating on the work space of the arts spaces. Not the front door, but the back door. You always have this glamour to galleries, but what makes a space interesting are the people behind it.

What does this vast Fo Tan studio say about you?
I don’t know! I try to be organized. I work on many different projects at the same time. This painting [points to nearby work on canvas] is my latest project. It’s labour intensive work. It is a contemplative process for me. From afar it’s an image of a cloud, but it’s actually made up of hundreds of Chinese characters I am painting an image of the sky from an earlier photograph of mine, but it’s made up of the characters fa ge – which can be translated as a ‘form of development’, or the sound of becoming rich. At the same time on Wikipedia I found fa ge means “fuck” in Shanghainese. You can evolve meaning from it. It can be the irony we come across every day. I think life is just ridiculous.

The sky theme seems to be a continuation from your earlier photography, and the City Cookies project where you made cookies based on the Hong Kong skyline with Sara Chi
This photo comes from a series of six. For the series I wanted to create something that looks like art. I wanted to sign a name on an art object. This is me, but not me. I signed it in pinyin phonetics. It’s quite ironic. A few times I have taken part in exhibitions in China and Korea, and they wrote my name in pinyin, so nobody actually realised I was involved. I found this interesting; I could have many first names. My friends know me as Warren, but in my art career I’m Leung Chi-Wo. Nowadays, we talk about identity issues. This was the idea with the photograph. My work is always developing through different stages – continuously.

Leung Chi-wo’s solo exhibition Asia Art Knots shows at Para/Site Art Space until Jun 20. Para/Site Art Space, 4 Po Yan St, Sheung Wan, 2517 4620; www.para-site.org.hk.