SC Gallery is pleased to present Singaporean artist duo Chow and Lin‘s first solo exhibition in Hong Kong. This exhibition features a curated selection of artworks from their internationally acclaimed, long-running project, “The Poverty Line” (2010 – present). It includes images from earlier global case studies alongside new work created in Hong Kong last December. By combining economic sociology with photographic typologies of food, Chow and Lin engage with global issues of poverty, inequality, and food systems through contemporary realism andresearch-based practice. The exhibition opens on March 14 and runs until April 25, 2026.

Chow and Lin, comprising photographer Stefen Chow (b. 1980) and economist Hui-Yi Lin (b. 1980), initiated their project in 2010. Both artists have experienced economic precarity in their upbringings, prompting them to examine poverty through an objective and methodical lens. They observe that poverty is often viewed as absolute poverty—the inability to secure basic necessities such as food, shelter, and clean water. However, poverty manifests in various forms across all societies. In many developed economies, it is typically framed as relative poverty, where one’s economic standing is assessed not merely by survivability but by local resources, living standards, and social expectations. Over the subsequent 16 years, merging their distinct professional backgrounds, they have traveled over 200,000 kilometers to capture visual case studies in 38 countries and territories, investigating the diverse definitions and lived realities of poverty worldwide.

Food serves as a powerful medium to visualize basic survival needs. Poverty cannot be fully understood if divorced from the people and their societies. This series centers on two universally accessible objects: food and newspapers. Chow and Lin incorporate these elements of daily life into their visual vernacular. Each photograph encapsulates the distinct lived experiences of specific times and places, translating abstract monetary figures into resonant visual statements. Their works offer audiences insight into the material conditions and social realities that shape lives within the contemporary global landscape, with each image acting as a time and geographical capsule.

This exhibition showcases 36 photograph works from “The Poverty Line” as resonant visual statements. The images are arranged into nine chromatic sets to recontextualise the relationship between sustenance and context. The selection is anchored by primary hues which unify diverse time periods and regions. Viewers are invited to move beyond a geographic understanding of poverty and to reconsider universal material conditions shaped by social realities.