Para Site Presents: Social Canteen 2025 – A Celebration of Art, Community, and Cultural Resonance in Hong KongIn celebration of the opening of Art Basel Hong Kong 2025, Para Site proudly hosted its annual Social Canteen—a convivial gathering that brought together its board committee, esteemed guests, institutional partners, and leading collectors. This signature event has become a much-anticipated moment of communion, where art and community converge in one of Hong Kong’s most dynamic cultural weeks.This year, Social Canteen unfolded within the atmospheric setting of An Choi, a beloved Vietnamese eatery nestled in the heart of the city. Here, Para Site introduced a compelling site-specific installation by celebrated artist Kawita Vatanajyankur, whose Tools and Work series transformed the restaurant’s intimate corners into poignant reflections on labor, gender, and the domestic sphere.Vatanajyankur’s works—renowned for their visceral and performative embodiment of female labor—found renewed resonance amid the textures and rhythms of a working kitchen. Pieces such as Lady Papaya, where the artist uses her head as a mortar to pound som tam (papaya salad), and Sponge, in which her face becomes a tool to scrub dishes, are both unflinching and poetic in their critique. These performances, recontextualized within An Choi’s culinary space, echo the oft-unseen emotional and physical toll of domestic work, particularly within Asian cultural contexts.Elsewhere in the installation, Vacuum—featuring the artist as a living vacuum cleaner, inhaling dust and debris from the floor—further amplified the surreal choreography of domestic servitude, oscillating between absurdity, endurance, and resilience.More than a dinner, Social Canteen 2025 became an immersive experience—an intersection of nourishment and discourse, where Vatanajyankur’s installations invited guests to reflect on the entangled relationships between consumption, labor, and care. The result was a powerful, multisensory evening that honored Para Site’s mission to foster critical dialogue, support experimental practices, and deepen the cultural fabric of Hong Kong through bold and thoughtful artistic interventions.