In 2024, the Department of Arts and Design at the University of Macau welcomed its inaugural cohort of doctoral students. These artists and researchers, hailing from diverse regions with educational backgrounds spanning 4 continents, form a unique cross-cultural creative collective. This exhibition is initiated by part of this group, presenting their ongoing reflections at this stage of their journey.

The exhibition’s title draws inspiration from Milan Kundera’s The Farewell Waltz, where parting serves as a pivotal ritual as characters move toward their respective destinies. From this curatorial perspective, the artists are constantly engaged in acts of farewell — partings from artistic habits, dispersals of thought, and breaks with tradition. Simultaneously, they experience continual reunions: tracing origins, integrating practices, and forging new identities. Through this cyclical motion of separation and convergence, they actively dismantle and reconstruct their cultural coordinates. The exhibition seeks to capture this dynamic, dialectical process of transformation.