A Black-Box Dive Into Anxiety, Decay, and Ecology
An eerie quiet settles over Empty Gallery’s pitch-black space as “Spillover”, Ann Zhao’s unsettling solo exhibition, draws visitors in and doesn’t let go. Known for its atmospheric black-box environment on the edge of Aberdeen’s industrial harbour in Hong Kong, Empty Gallery feels like the perfect place to experience something difficult—especially when the work is asking you to confront invisible anxieties tied to ecological and bodily decay. At the center of “Spillover” is a single idea borrowed from epidemiology: the moment a pathogen jumps from one species to another. Zhao translates that chilling, scientifically grounded event into an immersive material environment. Instead of presenting an explanation, the exhibition turns the gallery into something closer to a living laboratory—or even a deep-sea ecosystem—hovering on the edge of mutation. The atmosphere is built through a combination of suspended resin sculptures, ambient low-frequency soundscapes, and dimly lit glass vessels. Together, they create a space that feels responsive, almost physiological, where the boundaries between environment and body start to blur. And because you’re navigating in near-total darkness, your senses do the heavy lifting—touch and sound become the main language. Every ambient hum can feel like a heartbeat, or like a warning you can’t quite locate. What makes “Spillover” hit so hard is how intensely it focuses on fluid boundaries. The materials stay intentionally semi-translucent and organic—think latex, silicone, and biological resins—so the works never settle into one category. They slip between the synthetic and the natural, between industrial residue and living matter. Visually, the objects can resemble microscopic organisms, but they also evoke waste. That ambiguity is the point: the exhibition keeps asking whether humanity is acting as the host—or the parasite—inside its own environment. And then there’s the local context. Set against Hong Kong’s history as a densely…