ABOUT THE ARTISTS
CHOY CHUN WEI (B. 1973)
(Based in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia)
Choy Chun Wei (he/him) (b. 1973, Malaysia) expertly aligns fine art with graphic design, a defining aspect that sets his practice apart. His background in Graphic Design studies at the tertiary level imbues his art with a design-oriented conceptual reading and contextual imagination, significantly shaping his approach in the realm of fine arts. This fusion of design and fine art distinctly distinguishes Chun Wei from his contemporaries.
An established figure in the Malaysian art scene, Choy Chun Wei draws attention from both local enthusiasts and international collectors. His multi-layered collage works, often mistaken for abstraction, serve as an invitation for viewers to engage in his intricate pictorial dialogue. His practice is deeply influenced by the transition from rural to urban landscapes, transforming his perception of space suffocated by colossal structures and light pollution. This shift reshaped his use of materials, emphasising material culture in his practice. The act of ‘seeing’ becomes pivotal in identifying texts and found objects within his dense, intricate collages.
Objects’ significance directly relates to Malaysian material culture, as he explores the process of seeing and how it influences material selection and handling. For Chun Wei, understanding human reality isn’t enough; there’s a need for accurate interpretation and debate on relevant conditions, emphasising that we’re not mere cogs in a soulless machine.
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CIAN DAYRIT (B. 1989)
(Based in Manila, Philippines)
Cian Dayrit (he/him) (b. 1989, Philippines) is an artist working in painting, sculpture, and installation. His interdisciplinary practice explores colonialism and ethnography, archaeology, history, and mythology. Dayrit subverts the language and workings of institutions such as the state, museums, and the military to understand and visualize the contradictions these platforms and formats are built upon.
His cartographic artworks, often materialized through embroidery, textile, and mixed media collages, plot the patterns of imperialism and feudalism in activities such as the extraction of natural resources and the displacement and exploitation of marginalized populations. At the same time, the works summon new imaginaries that recognize the overlapping struggles and periods of resistance. His multimedia works examine how empires scored out the maps of the modern world, how its aftermath perpetuates industrial development, and how alternative territories might be imagined from the ground-up. Through narratives that expose the inner-workings of imperial power, Dayrit’s work invites us to reconsider how we spatially perceive and interpret the world. While informed by the experience of colonialism from the perspective of the Philippines, Dayrit’s work nonetheless defies being tied to a specific position or location. Instead, his work and research cross over geopolitical and supranational bearings.
Dayrit studied at the University of the Philippines. He has been exhibited in international biennials, including the Sidney Biennial, Gwangju Biennale, Berlin; Biennale for Contemporary Art; Bangkok Biennale, Kathmandu Triennale, New Museum Triennial “Songs for Sabotage”, New York; and Göteborg Biennial. Dayrit has also participated in exhibitions at Museo Reina Sofia and CentroCentro in Madrid; Talbot Rice Gallery, Edinburgh; ParaSite, Hong Kong; Hammer Museum, L.A.; and the Metropolitan Museum of Manila.
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H. H. LIM (B. 1954)
(Based in Rome, Italy)
H.H. Lim (he/him) (b. 1954, Malaysia) is a Rome-based artist who has divided his time between Rome and Penang since 1976. In 1990, he founded Edicola Notte, a notable art space in Rome. His multidisciplinary practice bridges Eastern and Western influences across video, installation, painting, and performance. Conceptually driven, Lim’s works explore the transient nature of meaning, blending subconscious elements, symbolism, memory, and language in playful, paradoxical ways.
Lim was one of four Malaysian artists representing the country at the 58th Venice Biennale in 2019, presenting ‘Timeframes’, a collection of triptych paintings and installations reflecting his journey through time and place. His exhibitions include the 3rd Tirana Biennial (2005), UCCA Ullens Center for Contemporary Art in Beijing (2010), the 55th Venice Biennale (2013), the 6th Prague Biennale (2016), and the 12th Dakar Biennale (2016). Lim has also shown work at the KL Biennale (2017), MAXXI in Rome (2016–2017), and Wei-Ling Contemporary in Kuala Lumpur with ‘Seen’ (2018) and ‘Aesthetics of Silence’ (2021).
Recent highlights include the Biennale of Urbanism Architecture in Shenzhen (2019), the Thailand Biennale (2021), and Out of the Dead End at OCAT Shenzhen. In 2022, he participated in Opera Opera at Palais Populaire, Berlin. In 2023, Lim showcased work across Italy, including In Dialogo con Giotto in Florence and ‘No Words Can Speak’ at Fondazione Baruchello, Rome, and in 2024, he returned to Malaysia for his much-anticipated solo exhibition ‘The Gaze of Sleepwalkers’ at Wei-Ling Gallery.
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IVAN LAM WAI HOE (B. 1975)
(Based in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia)
Ivan Lam (he/him) (b. 1975, Malaysia) has established a name for himself as one of the most progressive contemporary artists in Malaysia. His commitment and unrelenting pursuit of his artistic journey have seen his works span a variety of mediums and ideas, which are inspired by popular culture, autobiography, current affairs and every day vistas. With each series, he has become a maestro of different mediums; silk-screen, acrylic and oil painting, resin and aluminium. In Ivan Lam’s practice, every layer of his work is imbued with a sense of purpose and meaning.
Charting new territory for over two decades, he has conquered painting through his trademark use of resin, adding technical ingenuity while transforming narrative into hyper reality. His practice has evolved conceptually, questioning authorship, the role of the artist and the very nature of art itself.
Multiple solo and group exhibitions locally and abroad plus awards have ensured his work is in the collections of reputed institutions worldwide. He was the first and only Malaysian artist selected to present a one-man project at the inaugural Art Basel Hong Kong in 2013, and the first Malaysian artist commissioned by Louis Vuitton for its collection in 2014. In 2017, he was the only artist from Malaysia invited to create a project for the Karachi Biennale, followed two years later in 2019 by his participation in the 58th Venice Biennale, where he was one of four Malaysian artists representing the country’s first National Pavilion. His works at S.E.A Focus 2025 was acquired by the Singapore Art Museum as part of their permanent collection.
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KAMEELAH JANAN RASHEED (B. 1985)
(Based in New York, USA)
Kameelah Janan Rasheed (she/her) (b. 1985, United States) is an interdisciplinary artist based in Brooklyn. Her practice is invested in the shifting ecosystems of Black epistemologies and the agile relationships between the varied modes of reading, writing, archiving, editing, translating, publishing, reflecting upon, and arranging narratives about lived Black experiences. For Rasheed, the acts of reading and writing are not passive experiences and therefore her works engage an understanding of text as an unfixed, living organism that desires iteration and intervention. Rasheed’s practice takes form across an ecosystem of provisional projects and experiments: large-scale text-banner installations, lecture performances, publications, sound works, library interventions, and xeroxed “architecturally-scaled collages” (Frieze, 2018), and other forms yet to be determined.
Kameelah Janan Rasheed’s recent solo exhibitions include i want to climb inside every word and lick the salty neck of each letter at REDCAT, Los Angeles, in the coherence , we weep at KW Institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin, as well as Unsewn Time at the Art Institute of Chicago. Rasheed has recently participated in the Autostrada Biennale, Prizren; Urbane Künste Ruhr, Bochum; Front Triennale, Cleveland; Athens Biennale; and Prospect New Orleans. She has previously exhibited her work at Kunstverein Hannover; the Glasgow International; Kunsthalle Wien; Future Generation Exhibition at the 2017 Venice Biennale; the Brooklyn Museum; The New Museum, New York; MASS MoCA, North Adams; Studio Museum in Harlem; Portland Institute for Contemporary Art; Institute of Contemporary Art Philadelphia; Brooklyn Public Library, among others. Her public installations include Ballroom Marfa; Brooklyn Museum; For Freedoms x Times Square Art; Public Art Fund; and several others. Her work has been featured in Artforum, Artreview, Frieze, Hyperallergic, Guernica, The New York Times, Triple Canopy, and others. She received a 2021 Guggenheim Fellow in Fine Arts and was recently awarded the 2022 Creative Capital Award and Schering Stiftung Prize for Artistic Research.
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MARCOS KUEH (B. 1995)
(Based in The Hague, The Netherlands)
Marcos Kueh (he/him) (b. 1995, Malaysia) is a designer who has always had a desire to better understand his place and identity as a Malaysian. He graduated with his Bachelor’s in Graphic and Textile Design from the Royal Academy of Art, The Hague in 2022. His practice is about safeguarding contemporary legends onto textiles as tools for storytelling, just as the ancestors of Borneo did with their dreams and stories, before the arrival of written alphabets from the West. Currently his artistic research is focused on evoking the presence of colonial narratives in our present-day lives and conjuring new myths of what it means to be an independent country.
In 2022, he was awarded the Ron Mandos Young Blood prize for emerging artists, and his work was acquired by Museum Voorlinden in Wassenaar and Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam. His work has been presented in art fairs and exhibitions all around the world, including ASIA NOW Fair 2024, Paris, France; ART SG 2024, Singapore; Three Contemporary Prosperities (2022) at Galerie Ron Mandos, Amsterdam; When Things Are Beings (2022) at the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam; This Far and Further (2022) at Museum Voorlinden, Wassenaar, Netherlands; Common Threads (2017) at The Back Room, Kuala Lumpur; and UNKNOWN Asia (2017 & 2023), Osaka, Japan. His debut solo exhibition was Kenyalang Circus at The Back Room, KL, in 2023. Recently, he unveiled a nine-part installation under the Hanya Satu Single programme at the National Art Gallery of Malaysia, Kuala Lumpur, in December 2024.
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TAN ZI HAO (B. 1989)
(Based in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia)
Tan Zi Hao (he/him) (b. 1989, Malaysia) is an artist, writer, researcher, and educator. His works have covered a wide range of subjects from translingual practices, imaginary creatures, to posthuman entanglements. Tan’s ideas has taken shape across a diverse range of works involving soil ecology, language politics, interpretive etymology, mythical chimeras, and organic assemblages from carrier shells (the Xenophoridae family) to household casebearers (Phereoeca spp). Most of his artworks are conceived with an ideological intention to challenge essentialism by privileging the assemblage.
His scholarship has been published in ARTMargins, Inter-Asia Cultural Studies, Indonesia and
the Malay World, Journal of Southeast Asian Studies, and Bijdragen tot de Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde, among others. He is also a member of the type and design collective Huruf. He is currently a Senior Lecturer at the Faculty of Creative Arts, Universiti Malaya.
Tan completed his Ph.D. in Southeast Asian Studies at the National University of Singapore, undertaking fieldwork research on animal imagery in the Islamic art of Cirebon, West Java. He also holds an MA degree in International Relations and a BA degree in International Communications Studies from the University of Nottingham Malaysia Campus. Tan’s works have been displayed in multiple group exhibitions in Malaysia, Singapore, and Manila. In 2021, Tan was selected to participate in the Asian Art Biennale at the National Taiwan Museum of Fine Arts (NTMoFA).
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YIN YIN WONG (B. 1988)
(Based in Rotterdam, The Netherlands)
Yin Yin Wong (they/them) (b. 1988, The Netherlands) is a Dutch-Chinese-Malaysian multidisciplinary artist working across film, sculpture, drawing, and site-specific installation. Born in 1988 in the Netherlands to Malaysian-Chinese parents who emigrated in 1977, Wong’s upbringing in Nijmegen was deeply influenced by their family’s experiences in the service industry, particularly their operation of the restaurant Choong Kee [松 记] for over a decade.
Wong’s practice explores themes of diaspora, cultural identity, and the intersection of their modernist graphic design education with their Chinese-Malaysian heritage. Their work often examines the nuances of the Asian service industry in Western societies, shedding light on the personal narratives behind these communal roles. Through an auto-ethnographic lens, they question dominant frameworks that shape marginalised identities and cultures. Previously, as a graphic designer and art director, they worked on democratising access to visual culture through the publishing of artist books and the curation of exhibitions and public programs.
Currently, they are researching possible bridges between their modernist graphic design education and their Chinese-Malaysian diasporic upbringing. By positioning themself as a site where different legacies and languages converge and complicate each other, Wong seeks a common ground that speaks cross-culturally.
Their work has been presented at Singapore Art 2024 (Singapore), Tale of a Tub (Rotterdam), Framer Framed (Amsterdam), Natasha—Singapore Biennale ’22, and Venice Biennale ’22.
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