Sonya Chao is an artist from Hong Kong who is currently finishing her Graduate Diploma of art and design at the Royal College of Art and graduated from the University of Westminster with a BA in Fine art. She is a painter who works mainly with oil and also has a deep interest in tattooing.

Her work delves into the themes of identity, dreams and nostalgia, which echoes with her fascination with liminality and liminal space, both emotionally and physically. She is inspired by the flow and movement of water, smoke, dream states, metamorphosis or the state of being in between. Through her work, she wishes to transform her anxiety and fear of liminality and uncertainty into something beautiful. She merges reality with dream state, so the inspiration of her creations mainly come from her personal experiences, such as travelling and personal photography.

Destino (2003), a short animation produced from a collaboration between Dali and Disney, is very important to her and she has recently found out that it has stayed with her subliminally since childhood from the way she mark makes and what she is now drawn towards, such as the patterns of tattoos that she got. As a child, she was transfixed by the vision of portraying paintings with otherworldly scenes as portals between worlds.

Following this realisation, her style has shifted from Superflat, which originated from the post WW2 Japanese anime and manga craze to Surrealism. Inspired by artists such as Georgia O’Keeffe, Rae Klein and Izzy Wood, she has moved away from creating anime-inspired characters to more fluid, dreamlike paintings.

In Sonya’s words: ‘I see my painting practise as a journey and I am getting to know myself better by gradually uncovering the layers of my true identity through doing so’. She will grow while continuing her journey of exploring different ways of creating art.