Shedding Skins
Hidden Keileon Year of the Snake 2025 Wrap-up
Happy 2026! As we transition out of the Year of the Snake, we’ve been looking back at the skin we’ve shed over the last twelve months. It has been a year of looking backward to understand the present, and looking at the crumbling pieces of our lives to find a way to exist together.
We started 2025 with Apocalyptic Yesterday, our first large-scale exhibition, and since over the year have been busy occupying spaces both physical and political. We hosted Translated Literature and Zine Making workshops at the Deptford Literature Festival with Spread The Word, and were honored to join The Albany as Artists of Change.
In a year defined by solidarity, we sat with C&G Artpartment and Burmese artists in exile to host the opening of The Guilty Will Kneel, and brought Two Plant Gaysians to the Migration Matters Festival as one of the headliner events. Whether we were sharing food at our Community Picnic 2025, or meeting you at various markets with Tower Hamlets Archives and Bow Arts, this year was about finding each other in the debris. We wrapped up the year with the release of Zine #2: Crumble, our 2nd zine with 33 works by 22 artists, currently available to order here, or can be found at Common Press, People’s Letters, KafkaLondon and more.
What is an artist’s real life behind all the productions, publications, writings, PR, fundings?
For the six of us in Hidden Keileon, it’s messy, chaotic, unglamorous. Perhaps just like you, we are constantly struggling with fragments of life: rent, friends, families, life and death. We try our best to pick up pieces on the ground, only to then knock over a glass of water when we bend down.
It is the same puddle of water that we see beyond the precipice. We see a life full of joy, beauty and hope. The common struggle brought us together, forced us to transcend conflicts, deal with what’s real, and stop masking our hidden truths.
Members of Hidden Keileon are experiencing more major changes in life this year and we would love you to witness, or even be part of it as we tread through terrains of life.
In Januray we visited Jeffrey’s Wij Zijn De Tijden exhibition in Amsterdam, we get to celebrate people, and how fortunate we are to have each other, and to see and create arts in our lives.
We wish you a galloping horse year ahead!
Things we enjoyed this year
Artists are like sponges. When we give and make things we’d also need to rejuvenate by watching, reading, listening and playing other artworks. These are some of our favorite works that kept us inspired, unsettled and company:
📚 Books
Speak Still – Wing Lam Tong
Is A River Alive? – Robert Macfarlane
The Emperor of Gladness – Ocean Vuong
Beloved – Toni Morrison
🎬 Film
Anatomy of a Fall (dir. Justine Triet)
No Other Choice (dir. Park Chan-wook 朴贊郁)
世外 Another World (dir. Tommy Kai Chung Ng 吳啓忠)
🎮 Game
Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 (Sandfall Interactive)
(Jeffrey’s note: This is a game me and angela can’t stop gushing over about. This game has some of the best depiction of grief, with worldbuilding and storytelling that manages to ramp up over the course of 3 acts and still stay relavent and personal, and the work itself is oozing creativity, a love letter to the arts and the human struggle against impossible odds. Made by a team of mostly amateur game devs, Expedition 33 became the most awarded game in history, breaking records with 9 wins at The Game Awards 2025—including Game of the Year—and 6 at the Golden Joystick Awards.)
🎧 Album
You have been killed – Gag Salon
Sonor – Enji
Hit Me Hard And Soft – Billie Eilish
周國賢 (self-titled album) / 周國賢同名EP – Endy Chow 周國賢
Work with us in 2026
Hidden Keileon offers bespoke advice and services to corporates, governments, local councils, arts and cultural institutions, social enterprises, community businesses, industry leaders, and other creative practitioners. This support can help in all situations regarding progression and diversity, including collaborative workspace, strategy development, value enhancement, approach for complex issues, and the creation of new opportunities.
See our website for what we have to offer. www.hiddenkeileon.art or find us at info@hiddenkeileon.