A group exhibition for ESEA Heritage Month
We’re very excited to be taking part in East and South East Asian (ESEA) Heritage Month this September!
Threads of Home is an exhibition exploring how personal memories, traditions, and materials of home shape individual identity. It honours both the deeply rooted experiences of British-born ESEA artists and the continuous search for belonging among recent migrants, featuring new works by Lucy Foo (@lucyfooart), Thomas Li (@drinkthefloor), and Kit Hui Teo (@kitht.art)
Lucy Foo explores her journey through motherhood, capturing the reality of this journey without romanticising the pain. Thomas Li examines the tension between hyper-awareness of ethnicity and a grounded sense of belonging for people of colour in the choral world. Kit Hui Teo draws on her personal experience of migration, identity, and finding a sense of home between two cultures.
Bringing in the local community, Threads of Home will also showcase a collaborative Seed and Pod sewing workshop led by folk artist Zariq Rosita-Hanif in partnership with the Oxford Chinese Community and Advice Centre (OCCAC). This workshop will be accompanied by a photographic documentation of the vibrant community.
This exhibition serves as a direct conceptual anchor to the ESEA heritage month 2026 theme: Evolving Threads, highlighting how cultural heritage isn't static, but constantly adapting across generations and geography.
By combining these diverse experiences, the exhibition offers a rich and multifaceted exploration of identity and belonging. It invites viewers to reflect on their own experiences and to consider the ways in which our individual stories contribute to the larger tapestry of cultural heritage.
Thank you to the PeiWen legacy fund by Besea.n for supporting the community workshop & exhibition.
About the Artists & Art Work
Lucy Foo
Lucy Foo is an Oxford based mixed media conceptual artist of British-Chinese heritage. Foo creates works that are personal ontological representations of human reality.
One large canvas depicts 3 scenes from Foo's motherhood journey. "Motherhood is not motherhood without pain - I have no desire to portray this pain as good or bad, but just the presence of it"
The second piece will be a series of monochrome ink drawings of front doors. "This work is inspired by my daughter being able to identify and lead the way to certain friends and family’s homes as she starts to recognise and build schemas for what is a safe place thus also representing ‘the village’ that is bringing her up."
Thomas Li
Originally from Birmingham, Thomas Li is a British-Chinese multidisciplinary artist with a passion for music. Li paints in both traditional and digital mediums, focusing primarily on portraiture, and more recently, digital illustration. As a young artist, Li won first prize in the student artist category at the Worcester Open Exhibition 2021. After finishing his history degree, Li found his roots in Oxford’s vibrant music scene as both a choral singer, and beatboxer.
You may have already inadvertently seen Li's digital illustration work on poster boards and noticeboards up around Oxford. His most recent projects include the Riff Off at the Oxford Playhouse and Secrets: A Spider’s Tapestry for the Schola Cantorum of Oxford.
Li will be showing some self portraits from his school days alongside some new portraits of ESEA choral musicians, alongside some hand knitted socks.
Kit Hui Teo
Kit Hui Teo is a Singaporean creative based in Oxford. With a background in architecture, she has a long-standing interest in drawing and painting as creative forms of expression. Her contribution to Southeast Asian Heritage Month draws on her personal experience of migration.
On display are three narratives. The first explores the energy that compelled her to leave Singapore - a desire to escape the relentless pace and intensity of city life. "While this brought me a vibrant and fulfilling career, it also left me questioning how long this lifestyle was sustainable for, and whether something more heartfelt was waiting out there."
The second narrative explores the two sides of the same coin - something she only came to recognise after living overseas. And the final narrative explores this newfound middle ground, allowing Teo to develop a more nuanced perspective on life in Singapore.
Zariq Rosita-Hanif
Zariq Rosita-Hanif is an artist-illustrator of Malaysia Heritage currently based in Gloucester. She practices art that is heavily inspired by folk art.
Rosita-Hanif led the Seed & Pod sewing workshop in collaboration with the Oxford Chinese Community, inviting participants to explore the deep connections between heritage, origin, and home. Using two pieces of fabric - one representing origin and the other their current home - participants learned to embellish their stitches with seeds and pods gathered from local public spaces, from road verges and parks to footpaths. Symbolising new beginnings, growth, and rerooting, these seeds became a powerful metaphor for belonging across cultures.
OCCAC
Over the last 35 years, OCCAC has been serving the local Chinese community, especially non-English-speaking older members. OCCAC exists to serve the Chinese community in Oxfordshire by providing independent quality advice and services, enabling them to gain access to public resources, improve their quality of life and integrate into society.
Feng Ho
Feng Ho is a photographer, activist, and the Marketing Manager at Fusion Arts. Of Malaysian and Singaporean heritage, she is currently based in Abingdon (though the edge of Barton is where she’s really from). Over the summer, she has been capturing the lives and stories of the Oxford Chinese Community through her documentation.
