Galleri Konstepidemin presents The Piles We Carry, an exhibition by Hong Kong–Oslo based artist and filmmaker Yu Shuk Pui Bobby. Through video, soft sculpture and fragile paper props, the exhibition traces how a shared family ailment – haemorrhoids – opens onto intergenerational trauma, shame, humour and healing within an Asian migrant family.

Across video, soft sculpture and fragile paper props, Bobby traces how pain settles in the body when it cannot be spoken aloud. In many East Asian families, love is expressed indirectly and difficult emotions are swallowed rather than shared. Here, a shared physical vulnerability within the Yu family becomes a way of talking about shame, anger and exhaustion that have long remained unaddressed. The works invite visitors to sit, lean and lie down, and to feel how stories of illness, debt, war and migration lodge themselves in the muscles and nervous system.

The exhibition is built around three major film works. Paradise Air, shot during an artist residency in Chiba, Japan, drifts silently through the former love hotel Paradise AIR, now an artist residency above a pachinko parlour. The camera moves through dated interiors and lingering architectural details, while a reconstructed fragment of the artist’s childhood living room – leather sofa, paper television, a paper bottle of homemade plum wine – anchors the images in domestic memory and evokes the artist’s father’s gambling, her mother’s emotional outbursts and the complicated post-war entanglements between Hong Kong, Japan and family histories.

He’s Just a Kid! is a 3D animated short narrated from the perspective of a bear cub whose constipation and painful backside become a vehicle for thinking about childhood vulnerability. Screened from the back of a three metre-long plush crocodile that doubles as seating, the film stitches together cuteness, discomfort and absurdity, mirroring the way families often wrap unspoken pain in jokes and tenderness.

The main film, Whispers in the Belly, is a situational comedy-documentary that follows the Yu family as they reunite in Hong Kong and enter family therapy together. Improvising around a script based on real conversations, they attempt to speak openly about illness, shame and the pressure of caring for one another. The film is presented on over-scale inflatable chairs, grotesque yet inviting, echoing both the softness of plush toys and the discomfort of rectal conditions. Around the films, a series of stuffed creatures and paper furniture act as carriers of memory: at once ridiculous and deeply loved, they hold what could not previously be said.

The Piles We Carry suggests that family trauma rarely disappears; instead, it recirculates through bodies, objects and architecture. By combining slapstick, cuteness and sincerity, Bobby looks for another kind of remedy: a collective digestion in which things long carried alone might, finally, be held together.

Yu Shuk Pui Bobby

Yu Shuk Pui Bobby is a visual artist and filmmaker based between Hong Kong and Oslo. Working across moving image, installation, sculpture and performance, she explores intimate relationships and collaborations, focusing on body politics, Asian femininity, migration and the emotional labour of family life. Her works often begin from overlooked details of everyday experience – a medical condition, a shared meal, a domestic object – and expand into speculative narratives about care, shame and healing.

Yu holds a BA from the Academy of Visual Arts, Hong Kong Baptist University, and an MFA from the Oslo National Academy of the Arts. Recent projects include the long-term research series Genetic Salon, which examines human genetic engineering and perceptions of gender, body and identity through speculative fiction, and The Piles We Carry, which uses a shared family ailment to think through intergenerational trauma, humour and soft forms of resistance. She frequently collaborates with different communities in video-making, working with non-professional performers, family members and friends to blur the boundaries between documentary and fiction.

Her work has been exhibited at institutions and festivals such as Para Site (Hong Kong), Hong Kong Museum of Medical Sciences, Kunstnernes Hus (Oslo), UKS (Young Artists’ Society, Oslo) and other artist-run and film platforms in Europe and Asia. Yu is the founder of the production company YOU YU Studio AS. She received the Best Director Award at the 17th Fresh Wave International Short Film Festival in Hong Kong and is a recipient of the Norwegian Government Artist Working Grant.

This exhibition is a further presentation of The Piles We Carry, first shown at UKS (Young Artists’ Society), Oslo. It is a collaborative project involving the artist’s family and a number of key contributors.

Support team and installation contributors

Researcher: Yi-Hong Wang
Consultant: Sean Wong
Stuffed animals technicians: Piotrek Chrzanowski, Amanda B. Vesthardt
Paper furniture technicians: Jamie Donald, Adis Jakupović, Solveig Ylva Dagsdottir
Art therapist: Haylie Chang
Family therapist: Carney (Yip Man Wai)

Whispers in the Belly – film unit

Cast: the artist and her family, boyfriend: Nikolaj Legner Cucilovic
Writer & Director: Yu Shuk Pui Bobby
Producer: Christine Wong
Assistant Director: Ya Leung
Script Supervisor: Rain Chan
Editor & Colourist: Kinglun Leung
Composer: Kung Chi Yip
Sound Design & Mixing: Amy Chan Tsz Kwan
Poster Design: Xiran Luo
Hair & Make-up: Kinki Liu
Stills: Chau Gung, Karen Luk
Making-of: Isaac Chan
Art & Costume Director: Umi Ngai; Assistant Art Director: Prince
Director of Photography: Leung Ming Kai; Assistant Camera: Lau Chun Sing
Camera & Lighting Crew: Siu Ki Cheong, Chan Ho Yin, Fung Chi Wai, Kwan Yet Hei
Production Assistants: Jana Pang, Benson Ng, Hiram Tsang, Gavin Lee (Assistant Production Manager)
Sound Recordist: Saturday Chu

He’s Just a Kid! – animation

3D Animator: Wei Hsiang Zeng
3D character modelling & rigging: Wei Hsiang Zeng, Tommy619
3D Compositor: Su Hung Hsiu
Sound Design & Mixing: Amy Chan Tsz Kwan

Paradise Air – film unit

Cinematographer: Yuji Fan
Production Assistant: Ayumi Seki