Han Chai’s solo exhibition at the CAM Museum in October felt less like a statement and more like an act of remembrance. The exhibition centres on Sha Ma Te, a subculture formed by young migrant workers in China who developed their own visual language through hair, clothing, online imagery, and shared codes of belonging. Often dismissed or caricatured, Sha Ma Te has long been treated as something fleeting or excessive.
Chai Han, “The Cheap Thing”, clay, 2025, installation view at Casoria Contemporary Art Museum, Naples, Italy, courtesy of the artist
For Chai, this community is not a reference point or historical aside. It is personal. A documentary film plays quietly within the exhibition space, offering a subtle reminder of the lives and rhythms that shaped the work. It captures a transient workforce that built its own world through labour, movement, and shared experience. These were young people who worked long hours, travelled constantly, and still found time to form identities together. They developed their own humour, aesthetics, and sense of pride. Chai’s sculptures exist within this atmosphere without explanation. They are finely finished, visually striking, and carefully resolved. Their surfaces draw the viewer in, holding attention long enough for meaning to settle.
Chai Han, “0.88 Yuan”, jade, 2025, installation view at Casoria Contemporary Art Museum, Naples, Italy, courtesy of the artist
Works such as Jade ID (2025) present carved identification plaques bearing QQ handles, mottos, and online identities rather than legal names. What once existed only in fleeting digital spaces is given density and endurance, treated with a seriousness rarely afforded to lives lived at the margins. Nearby, The Cheap Thing I & II (2025) transform inexpensive cigarette packaging into solid form. The imagery is familiar, yet heavy with the residue of daily exhaustion and routine. These are objects tied to breaks, pauses, and persistence rather than aspiration. Through careful workmanship, Chai elevates what is usually overlooked without romanticising it. In Phone Grave (2025) and Phone Monument (2025), obsolete mobile phones are embedded like memorials. Their screens glow faintly, no longer tools of connection but traces of communication that refuse to disappear. They mark a moment when identity, friendship, and visibility were negotiated through early digital platforms. Here, technology is treated simply as evidence.
Chai Han, “Jade ID”, jade, 2025, installation view at Casoria Contemporary Art Museum, Naples, Italy, courtesy of the artist
Many of the works are carved in jade, a material deeply embedded in Chinese cultural history. Traditionally associated with royalty, ritual, and wealth, jade carries ideas of patience, care, and endurance. It demands time and precision, shaped with the expectation that it will outlast its maker. Chai draws a clear line between past and present. Her hands follow a lineage of craft that stretches back generations, echoing the way her forefathers carved objects for emperors and elites. Yet the forms she creates speak to contemporary labour and subculture rather than authority. This contrast gives rise to the work’s dry, understated satire. In a world driven by rapid consumption, where things are used and discarded without reflection, Chai works with a medium that resists disappearance. The gesture is deliberate and grounded. She treats Sha Ma Te culture with the seriousness once reserved for dynasties and courts, quietly questioning who is granted preservation and who is expected to pass without record. The exhibition gains its weight through emotional clarity. Chai is not observing Sha Ma Te from a distance. These were her friends growing up. She understood their work ethic, their intensity, and the ways they supported one another through shared hardship. She absorbed their humour and their way of moving through the world. That closeness gives the work its authority. There is no sentimentality here, and no attempt to soften the reality it reflects. Chai makes a direct statement: you mattered. Your labour mattered. The fact that you found each other mattered.
Chai Han, “Phone Monument”, mixed media, 2025, installation view at Casoria Contemporary Art Museum, Naples, Italy, courtesy of the artist
The sculptures read less as commentary and more as evidence. They carry memory without drama and sit firmly in the gallery, confident in their presence. Chai’s control of medium becomes essential here. She understands how materials communicate and how crafted form can carry meaning without disguise. Her work reframes a subculture often dismissed as tasteless or excessive, placing it within a longer tradition of care, skill, and endurance. Chai gives weight to a generation shaped and often erased by industrialisation. The work lingers because that memory has already been held. Following the exhibition at the CAM Museum in October, Han Chai will present a solo exhibition in London from 23 January 2026 at Greatorex Street Gallery.
Info:
Han Chai. Royal Screw
17 – 24/10/2025
CAM Museum – Casoria Contemporary Art Museum
Via Calore, 17 – Casoria (NA)
casoriacontemporaryartmuseum.com/it/
Greatorex Street Gallery
21–26/01/2026
10 Greatorex Street, London
greatorexstreet.com
Actor and performer, he loves visual arts in all their manifestations.
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