At first glance, Man Mei To’s Curly Breathing I appears to be a sculpture in motion, even while standing still. Made from African padauk wood, oil and stainless steel, its organic forms seem to bend, tighten, release and unfold, as though the work itself is learning how to breathe.

That sense of movement is at the heart of the piece, which earned Man Mei To the top honour at The Hari Art Prize 2026 in Hong Kong. Now in its third edition, the prize attracted nearly 700 applications from Hong Kong-based emerging artists, the highest number in its history, underscoring both the depth of the city’s young creative community and the growing role of hospitality spaces as platforms for contemporary art.

Man received the HK$100,000 cash award for Curly Breathing I, while Katrina Leigh Mendoza Raimann and Ailsa Wong were named runners-up for Small Stepping and Lightning, respectively. Together, the three works formed a quiet but powerful conversation about the body, memory, transition and the unstable conditions of contemporary life.

For Man, Curly Breathing I began not as an abstract idea, but with her own body. The work, she explains, was commissioned by Para Site and developed from breathing exercises prescribed by a Chinese medicine practitioner.

“The inspiration came from my own bodily movements during breathing exercises,” she says. “These exercises reminded me of an earlier project involving dancers. From those archives, I selected gestures that felt both powerful and relaxed. I folded them repeatedly, adjusted them, and over time, they evolved into the sculptural forms you see here.”

The result is a work that carries the memory of movement without directly representing the body. Its folds suggest tension and release, its wooden forms hint at growth, endurance and adaptation. For Man, the notion of breathing is connected to a broader exploration of mobility: how people move, how they inhabit environments, and how the physical body survives periods of pressure and change.

She references sociologist Zygmunt Bauman’s idea of “liquid modernity,” a world marked by constant change, instability and rootlessness. In that context, breathing becomes more than a biological function. It becomes a way of negotiating pressure.

“Living in a high-pressure society, it is impossible to escape the lingering emotional toll of our collective lows,” she says. “That kind of rumination can be overwhelming, making one feel drowned and unable to stomach the pressure.”

Through the sculpture, Man imagines the body relearning its own rhythm. She describes the act of inhaling as a tightening, a clenching of the fingers and wrists, a tension that travels through the arms and torso. Exhaling becomes release.

“Releasing the inhaled breath also expels the chaotic knot of emotions within,” she says.

The materiality of Curly Breathing I is equally central to its meaning. Man has long been fascinated by the relationship between the body and landscape, and her practice has involved a wide range of materials over the years, from beeswax, oil pastels, ceramics and hair to street water, plaster, wood and metal. She says that, between 2009 and 2022, she created 49 works across 13 categories and experimented with 72 types of materials.

Over time, her approach has shifted. As a student, she was drawn to fragile and deformable materials such as wax, hair and plaster. Later, she began to work more practically with traditional sculptural materials including wood, metal and industrial supplies. More recently, 3D scanning opened a new path in her practice.

For the Curly Breathing series, she returned to digital archives of dancers’ bodies in motion, selecting gestures that felt “grounded and powerful yet completely relaxed.” Those forms were then folded, adjusted and transformed into sculpture.

“My choice of wood as the primary material reflects how trees grow over time, altering their shapes according to the sun and wind direction,” she says. “Oil paint provides another layer of fluidity.”

That connection between body and landscape runs through much of Man’s work. She thinks of body language as a profound form of communication, one that often reveals more than words. Her practice has examined hands, skin, fragmented body parts, streetscapes and landscapes, often blurring the line between the human form and the environments that shape it.

“I hope the audience can feel the energy of free, organic growth radiating from the work,” she says.

If Man’s work begins with breath and bodily tension, Katrina Leigh Mendoza Raimann’s Small Stepping begins with a quiet afternoon walk.

The textile work, made from burlap, wool and cotton yarn, was inspired by river moss and algae. What stayed with Raimann was not a dramatic landscape, but a fleeting natural observation: stillness and motion coexisting in the same fragile form.

“That quiet moment by the river, observing the moss and algae, revealed a delicate balance of stillness and subtle movement,” she says. “I was fascinated by how the natural entanglement of these organic forms embodies a sense of calmness intertwined with life’s quiet, persistent shifts.”

In Small Stepping, that memory becomes a hand-crafted tapestry. Raimann uses embroidery, knotting and tufting to translate a natural encounter into a textured emotional landscape. The work’s soft, carpet-like surface suggests something calm and tactile, yet its forms also feel unpredictable, as though they are shifting beneath the surface.

For Raimann, textile work is not simply a medium; it is a way of thinking through labour, identity, gender, intimacy and the body. The slowness of the process matters.

“The slow, deliberate craft techniques I employ function as embodied acts of reflection and care,” she says. “These processes physically embed emotion and labour into the fabric, turning material into a site of meaning.”

That material labour allows Raimann to approach feelings that are hard to articulate directly: memory, vulnerability, hope and the messy, layered nature of human experience. In Small Stepping, she sees a tension that belongs not only to the natural world, but to relationships, migration, distance and the act of making itself.

“The organic shapes and the interplay between messiness and linearity evoke the simultaneous presence of stillness and movement as an acknowledgment of life’s unpredictable, yet interconnected, flow,” she says. “This tension captures the emotional landscape of transition, reflection, and hope.”

“For me, the image suggests an alien-like atmospheric creature drifting across the upper part of the painting,” Wong says. “A lightning-like form cuts diagonally through the composition, while small bird-like shapes gather and move in flocks.”

The image was not planned through sketches. Instead, it emerged intuitively, through a process Wong compares to automatic drawing. Although the work is static, its forms appear to be in motion: appearing, dissolving, gathering and dispersing.

“I was interested in capturing a state that exists between stillness and movement,” she says. “I’m often drawn to organic, life-like forms that feel both familiar and strange.”

Wong’s broader practice spans painting, video, image-making, games and installation, but she says each work gradually reveals the form it needs. Some ideas require viewers to physically move through a space. Others need duration, virtual exploration or the layered qualities of digital image-making.

Lightning, she says, belongs somewhere between the physical and the virtual.

“Digital painting allows colours and layers to remain extremely pure and precise, while abrupt transitions, hard edges, glitches, and fragmented layers can coexist within the same image,” she says. “These qualities reflect the visual conditions of contemporary life, shaped by screens and digital environments.”

While Wong works across media, she is less interested in producing objects than in constructing experiences. Her work often explores consciousness, intuition, belief and fragmented life experiences — things that cannot be easily represented or explained.

“Art allows me to construct spaces where uncertainty is not something to overcome but something to inhabit,” she says. “I don’t think art provides answers. Instead, it creates a framework for encountering questions that remain unresolved.”

That idea may also help explain the resonance of The Hari Art Prize itself. In a city where artists are continually negotiating space, identity, memory and change, the prize has become more than a competition. It is a platform for works that ask viewers to slow down, pay attention and consider what might otherwise pass unnoticed.

This year’s winning works do not shout for attention. They breathe, ripple and flicker. They take shape through wood, thread and digital texture. They turn personal movement, moss by a river and screen-born fragments into meditations on how people inhabit a changing world.

For Man Mei To, the recognition comes at a pivotal moment. She plans to divide the prize money carefully: one third toward her next project, one third toward a course to learn a new technique, and the remainder into savings for future materials.

“I am deeply grateful to The Hari Art Prize for extending a gesture of warmth during such a challenging time,” she says, “and for acknowledging and affirming the direction of this new phase in my artistic practice.”

In that sense, Curly Breathing I feels like both an artwork and an instruction: inhale, hold, release, begin again.