White Cube has announced representation of London-based artist Firenze Lai. Her first exhibition with the gallery and inaugural show in the UK will take place at White Cube Mason’s Yard, London, in summer 2026.
Interrogating the social, political and spatial subtexts that influence individual and collective psyches, Lai’s dreamlike paintings of anonymous figures and places reflect upon the human condition, whilst exploring both physical and virtual realms.
Lai was born in Hong Kong in 1984, where she lived and worked for many years before moving to London in 2022. Growing up in a densely populated metropolis, stark contrasts, political shifts and a frenetic, labyrinthine cityscape were formative in the development of her artistic practice.
Applying a subdued palette and expressive painting style to transform people and places into shapeshifters and phantasms, Lai’s inspirations traverse time and region: the esotericism of William Blake; the smears and frantic brushwork of Francis Bacon; and the portraiture of Anthony van Dyck.
Elastic and endlessly reconfigurable, figures appear alone or in groups across her illusory canvases. Liberating her work from the specifics of time, person and location, the artist has said: ‘Each figure that I paint is the same person […] It is you and I.’
Lai’s work has been part of major group exhibitions around the world, including ‘Viva Arte Viva’ in the 57th Venice Biennale, Italy (2017), ‘Global(e) Resistance’ at Centre Pompidou, Paris (2020), the New Museum Triennial, New York (2015) and the Shanghai Biennale, China (2014).
Firenze Lai is represented by White Cube and Vitamin Creative Space.
