Discover incredible artworks at our redesigned Beijing Cathay Pacific lounge

Our Move Beyond spirit is rooted in the belief that travelling means more than just going from one place to another. We hope to move and inspire you on the ground and in the air, and one of the ways we elevate the Cathay Pacific experience is by incorporating art into your journey. Our Gallery in the skies project brought a collection of more than 30 artworks into our new Boeing 777-300ER Business cabins. Now, we’re proud to unveil four specially curated pieces at our redesigned lounge at Beijing Capital International Airport.

These recent acquisitions were overseen by Dr Henrietta Tsui-Leung, who had previously served as one of our curators for Gallery in the skies. As the co-founder of the Hong Kong Art Gallery Association, and founder and CEO of Hong Kong’s Ora-Ora gallery , Dr Tsui-Leung was perfectly placed to connect us with remarkable contemporary artists working in Hong Kong and the Chinese Mainland.  

“The curatorial concept was about creating a dialogue between Hong Kong and Beijing artists,” says Marcus Lui, Head of End-to-End Customer Experience and Strategy at Cathay Pacific. “We wanted to give the lounge a sense of place.” 

The lounge’s new design evokes a “house within a house”, as Lui describes it. Ceilings and smaller rooms were built for enhanced privacy and comfort. “We played with scale throughout the lounge, so the reception feels warm and intimate, then it opens out into a larger area with plenty of natural light,” he explains. “We wanted to approach the space in an interesting way that defines the different experiences we create in our lounge.”  

Given the parameters of this space, Dr Tsui-Leung worked with the Cathay Pacific team to handpick the artworks. “The lounge is an oasis of calm,” she remarks. “To complement this space, we selected artworks that express balance, poise and harmony through control of form and composition.” 

The first piece you’ll encounter at the lounge is a striking calligraphic work by Hong Kong artist Chui Pui Chee . This new commission is emblazoned with the characters “翱翔” in shimmering black ink swirled with Cathay Pacific’s signature Jade green colour. Translating to “soaring” in English, the term evokes the “unfettered joy of flight”, as Dr Tsui-Leung puts it.   

The centerpiece in one of the enclosed spaces is World Cloud, a map-like painting by Beijing-based artist Xu Lei . In this work, jade-coloured mountains rise against an azure background, with clouds of pink and light blue drifting across the upper edge of the composition. Referencing an orographic map by the 19th-century German cartographer August Heinrich Petermann, World Cloud is a reinterpretation of how landscapes have historically been depicted. The mountain peaks are annotated with their respective elevations – a nod to our data-driven age.  

“As befits a map, the work is both an object of beauty from a distance and a material of reference and insight up close,” says Dr Tsui-Leung. “The positioning of this artwork creates a sense of studious reflection and calm.” 

A series of drawings on boarding passes by Hong Kong artist, architect and collector William Lim adorns the main lounge area. Quickly sketched during idle moments in transit, Lim’s boarding pass drawings depict scenic tourist spots and views from aircraft windows. For Dr Tsui-Leung, these spontaneous drawings are a “diary of the universe in motion”.  

Also installed in the main lounge area is Zhang Yanzi’s pair of ink-on-paper works, collectively titled The Genetic Lottery. For this project, the Beijing-based artist painted neat rows of dots onto a sheet of paper, then cut out each dot and arranged it on a separate sheet. The sheet with the excisions is presented alongside the sheet with the dots – a negative and a positive. Inspired by the variation of human eye colours, The Genetic Lottery explores chance and heritability, appealing to our sense of shared humanity and equality in spite of visible difference.  

All of these works resonate with Cathay Pacific’s identity, mission and values. The choice to feature a range of artistic media “reflects the variety of destinations the airline reaches and the diversity of its customers”, says Dr Tsui-Leung. “For each of the artists, ‘Cathay Pacific’ is a name that carries weight and meaning. They have all had positive experiences of flying with the airline. The selection of their artworks represents an alignment in vision and aesthetic.” 

For Dr Tsui-Leung, the lounge “embodies a uniquely Asian endeavour, with a distinct flexibility in perspective and spatial elegance. It is a place of repose and balance, of gentle inquiry and subtle introspection.”