Visiting Artist Lecture Series—Visual Arts MFA—Columbia University
Visiting Artist Lecture Series—Visual Arts MFA—Columbia University

Thursday, November 10th: Ho Tzu Nyen and Ho Rui An

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Ho Tzu Nyen makes films, videos and theatrical performances that often draw upon historical and philosophical texts and artefacts. He appropriates the structures of epic myths, invoking their grandeur while revealing them to be not merely stories, but discursive tools. His work deconstructs the idea of modernization via Western influence or beneficence, by presenting viewers with a paradox. In it, Eastern and Western forms appear at once disjointed and seamless, coexisting in a fluid aesthetic interpretation that allows for the complexities of influence and adaptation to drift through each other.

Ho Tzu Nyen was born in Singapore in 1976. He earned a BA in Creative Arts from Victorian College of the Arts, University of Melbourne (2001), and an MA in Southeast Asian Studies from the National University of Singapore (2007). His work has been presented at the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao (Bilbao, 2015); DAAD Gallery (Berlin, 2015); Guggenheim Museum (New York, 2013); Mori Art Museum (Tokyo, 2012); the 54th Venice Biennale (Venice, 2011); Artspace, (Sydney, 2011); Tate Modern (London, 2010); the 6th Asia-Pacific Triennial (Brisbane, 2009); the 1st Singapore Biennale (2006) and the 26th Sao Paulo Biennale (2004). His films have premiered at Cannes Film Festival (2009) and the 66th Venice International Film Festival (2009).

 

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HO RUI AN is an artist and writer working in the intersections of contemporary art, cinema, performance and theory. He writes, talks and thinks around images, with an interest in investigating their emergence, transmission and disappearance within contexts of globalism and governance. Working primarily across the mediums of lecture, essay and film, his recent research considers questions surrounding liberal hospitality, participatory democracy and speculative futures.

He has presented projects at the 2nd Kochi-Muziris Biennale, TPAM Performing Arts Meeting in Yokohama, Serpentine Galleries (London), Hessel Museum of Art and CCS Bard Galleries (Annandale-on-Hudson), NUS Museum (Singapore), QUT Art Museum (Brisbane), LUMA/Westbau (Zürich), Para Site (Hong Kong) and Witte de With (Rotterdam). He is the Singapore desk editor for ArtAsiaPacific and has contributed to numerous publications. He lives and works in Singapore.