MUI WO JOURNALIST, POET AND CERAMICIST ILARIA MARIA SALA WANTS US TO LIVE OUR BEST LIVES, AND SHE LEADS BY EXAMPLE. ELIZABETH KERR REPORTS
Ilaria Maria Sala is on her way to White Cube in Central to see the latest exhibition by Korean artist Lee Jin-woo. She looks suitably summery walking through ifc Mall in a multi-coloured dress she made herself and a straw hat. As is the case in Hong Kong these days the weather has turned and the hat is now useless: it’s bucketing down. “I can get to the gallery but how I’m going to cycle home from Mui Wo ferry is a mystery,” she says with a chuckle.
Though she won’t share any dates, Ilaria has been living in Hong Kong for a good long stretch. Born in Bologna, she studied Mandarin and religion, which took her to Beijing for four years. She followed that with another four in Tokyo. “I studied Japanese, but it was Japanese for students of Chinese. That’s a weird type of Japanese where you’re capable of reading an academic paper but not ordering coffee,” she laughs again. Eventually she made her way to Hong Kong and settled here as a journalist. “I’ve lived in Asia for far longer than I lived in Italy,” she says.
Initially Ilaria used the SAR as a home base for work and travel, feeling neither like a temporary resident or one in it for the long haul. “However, Hong Kong was always the place I felt I could come back to, and be at ease and be stimulated by,” she says. “When I lived in Tokyo, I absolutely loved it; it’s the kind of city where you get obsessed about Japan, which is of course fine, but I find Hong Kong still gives you a much broader view, a more international view, of the world.”
ON THE PATH
Ilaria is one of the most pleasantly opinionated people you’ll ever meet. As a writer for Zolima, Artomity, occasionally in Italian, and as a contributor to the literary journal Cha, South China Morning Post, The New York Times and The Guardian, she covers art, architecture and her personal favourite, food. “I’m a very strong advocate of a more ecological way to feed ourselves,” she says. Ilaria is vegan, and baffles at the vitriol her lifestyle choice can spark. “It’s a word that really turns people off. You should see the amount of abuse I get online if I say something as simple as ‘Being vegan diminishes your impact on the planet by 70%’. It’s weird.”
Though they traditionally go hand-in-hand, Ilaria doesn’t write travel. “I refuse to,” she states flatly. “I think tourism is one of the most destructive industries out there.” She’s a huge fan of discovering the world, but not of commodifying people’s living spaces to cater to tourists and their Instagram posts. “Attempting to do so changes the fabric of a city,” she says. “In general, there’s a greater fragility in social networks, which can be damaged by tourism. Hong Kong, like many other places, now has certain areas where no one in their right mind would go.
“If you look at what tourism brings in terms of what kind of economy it sustains, and what it takes away in terms of the liveability of the city, I’m not sure that that equation stands,” she adds.
Ilaria’s got some strong opinions about the fashion industry too, and has been making her own clothes for 15 years. “I like fashion to look at; I can see the art in it, but I hate what it does to women,” she says. Making her own clothes is liberating, it frees her from life’s ‘we only have this in size zero’ moments, and, most importantly, it’s less damaging to the environment. “I’m surprised how few people realise how impactful fashion is and how exploitative of the environment and people.” Not convinced? Do an image search for Atacama Desert clothing dump.
ROOM TO WRITE – AND POT
Ilaria made the move to Mui Wo to escape the city bustle a decade ago and she’s never looked back. “I love living so close to nature,” she says. “Even on days when I do not have a lot of time to spend outside, I can just take a mini walk along the beach, or around the villages, and hear so many birds, see so many trees, saturate my eyes with green leaves. It is always so refreshing, no matter what.”
The amount of living space Ilaria can get for her buck in South Lantau also appeals. “I do so much stuff with my hands. Here I have space for a sewing machine, block printing and so on.” The ‘so on’ being her ceramic work, which she describes as a constant process of learning and experimenting.
“My style changes according to how I feel or what I am trying out – in terms of colour, of course, but also form or texture. I make mostly functional pieces, and vases – which can be functional or decorative according to how one uses them.” Sometimes Ilaria sells her pieces; sometimes she’s commissioned (find her on instagram: ilariamariasala).
But IIaria’s a writer first – aside from the journalism, she’s written four books in Italian and she’s a poet. “I very much like the Hong Kong approach to poetry which is often about what may seem like mundane objects, very local sights, moments, and so on,” she says. “My poetry can be about a pair of shoes that reminds me of someone, or about something I see on a wall, or the shape of a bend in one of Lantau’s many waterways… That is to say, I am one of the many people inspired by Leung Ping Kwan but I owe a lot to poet Tammy Ho LaiMing, too. I can’t say what I gain from the process, it is more of an urge than anything else.”
Journalling is another of Ilaria’s compulsions and, no surprise, she’s kept a diary since she was six years old. She points out that because journalling is seldom if ever taught, many of us feel “unqualified” for it. And this is something she wants to change: she’s recently started to give journalling classes (email journalyingintobliss@gmail.com).
“Journalling is something that happens in very many different ways;” she says, “it need not be anything written at the level of the collected letters of Virginia Woolf. That’s just not the case. What’s written is between you and the page. There’s no need to show it to anyone. And actually, don’t. Trust me,” she laughs again, describing the horror of revisiting one of her six-year-old self ’s diaries.
Journalling can be in the form of classic “Dear Diary” reflections, or something more outward looking. It can be a chronicle of something done for passion, such as a poet’s – or ceramicist’s – progress notes. It can be letters to oneself. For Ilaria, the most vital form of journalling, and the one that provides the most happiness, is a gratitude diary. She started one during COVID.
“That was a time where we all felt very scared and very destabilised in our normal life. To just write every morning that I was grateful for being healthy, that I was grateful for having friends I could still communicate with, for Skype, for the bulbuls singing… That’s a type of journalling that shifts your attention away from the things that are not going well. It’s a counterbalance.”
Whether she’s showing someone how best to express themselves, writing, making pots, or posting about being less harmful, Ilaria is living her best life. She’s a firm believer that individuals can make a difference. “We can have a big impact,” she concludes. “Believing otherwise dismisses our own power.”