Hong Kong doesn’t sleep, and neither do dreams. Step inside the LANDMARK Atrium this spring and you’ll find a dream made tangible, pulsing with color, curiosity, and the surreal signature of Lauren Tsai. Known for her shape-shifting presence across modeling, acting, and visual art, Tsai has conjured something truly singular with My Dream: Our Hill—her first large-scale installation, and a mind-bending, miniature universe perched right in the heart of the city.
Towering over the exhibit is a fantastical apple tree, not grown but imagined—its bark swirls into the architecture of tiny homes, carved right into the trunk like a cross-section of a dream. Each nook and hollow carries echoes of Tsai’s past works: sketches that whisper, paintings that glow, sculptures that feel like relics from a forgotten inner world. It’s a community of the subconscious, brought to life not with bricks but with brushstrokes and belief.
There’s something oddly tender about it all. Visitors—cast as gentle giants—peer down at this intricate world, walking the edge between voyeur and participant. It’s part model village, part memory palace, and fully Lauren: introspective, meticulous, laced with whimsy and shadow in equal measure. Her usual themes—identity, time, transformation—are etched into every crevice, only now they’re not confined to canvas.
Of course, there’s a fashion twist. Tsai teamed up with HUMAN MADE, the cult Japanese label co-founded by NIGO, for a run of limited-edition tees sold exclusively through a pop-up nestled inside the installation. Each piece is wearable art, fusing her visual language with the streetwear brand’s sharp edge. Even dessert doesn’t escape her dreamscape—Mandarin Oriental’s Cake Shop dropped a custom apple tart, “Apple Elysium,” served daily in scarce quantities like edible artifacts from this imagined world.
In an era where “immersive” is a tired buzzword, My Dream: Our Hill actually earns it. This isn’t an Instagram trap or a maze of LED lights—it’s quiet magic, laced with the kind of sincerity that art too often forgets. Tsai has built a place where you can linger, reflect, and—just for a moment—remember what it was like to see the world from two feet tall.
Hong Kong, with all its clash and contrast, proves to be the perfect setting. It’s a city that thrives on the balance between the hypermodern and the spiritual, the compressed and the expansive—just like Tsai’s work. Her hill might be small in scale, but it looms large in the imagination.
And maybe that’s the point. We outgrow a lot of things. But dreams? Not so easily.
