PRESS RELEASE

December 21, 2023

Ho Tzu Nyen: A for AgentsApril 6 – July 7, 2024
Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo presents a solo exhibition of Singaporean artist Ho Tzu Nyen.
Ho’s films, video installations, and performances traverse historical events, political ideologies, subjectivities,and cultural identities of Southeast Asia. Drawing from existing film footage, archival material, anddocumentation, rearranged into abstract yet evocative images, his work renders the complexities ofgeopolitical histories palpable. Ho’s work has been presented in numerous art institutions and biennials aswell as theaters and film festivals worldwide. In Japan, he has participated in exhibitions including Time ofOthers at the Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo in 2015, and he has produced new work for the Performing
Arts Meeting in Yokohama (TPAM) in 2018 and again in 2021, Aichi Triennale 2019, Yamaguchi Center for Artsand Media [YCAM] in 2021, and Toyota Municipal Museum of Art in 2021–22.
This latest exhibition at the Museum ofContemporary Art Tokyo, Ho Tzu Nyen: A forAgents, traces the trajectory of the artist’spractice, presenting six film-basedinstallations alongside a new work. The
exhibition includes Ho’s earliest video
installation, Utama—Every Name in History IsI (2003), which challenges the modern
narrative of Singapore’s foundations bytracing its precolonial origin to Sang Nila
Utama, who is said to have named the land
“Singapura” (Lion City, in Sanskrit).
1. Utama—Every Name in History is I, video still, 2003

Singapore’s past also features in One or Several Tigers (2017), where 3D animations of a tiger and a humanmorph into various instances of the ruler and the subjugated, including the precolonial tiger as ancestor spirit
and the mythological weretiger; the colonial encounter of a tiger and the road surveyor George D. Coleman
who served the British administration in the nineteenth century; and the battle between the British army andthe “Tiger of Malaya,” Japanese military commander Tomoyuki Yamashita, during World War II.
A pair of works in the exhibition, The Nameless and The Name (both 2015), use existing film footage tospeculate on two enigmatic individuals from Malaya’s tumultuous political past. The Nameless sheds light onContact

Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo｜ Public Relations (Kudo / Inaba / Uchibori)
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1Secretary-General of the Communist Party of Malaya, Lai Teck, who operated as a triple agent for the British,
French, and Japanese during World War II, while The Name takes up the story of Gene Z. Hanrahan, whoauthored publications on the Malayan Communist Party using highly classified information—some believe
him to be a ghostwriter.

3. The Nameless, video still, 2015

2. One or Several Tigers, video still, 2017

In 2012, Ho initiated the project, The Critical Dictionary of Southeast Asia with the question “What constitutes
the unity of Southeast Asia, a region that has never been unified by language, religion or political structures?”
It is a matrix for his artistic production, including the online platform shown in this exhibition, CDOSEA(2017-). The sequencing of sampled images and keywords is continuously generated by an algorithm andresists any definitive meaning of the term “Southeast Asia.”
Among Ho’s works produced in Japan over recent years, Voice of Void (2021) is presented in the exhibition.
Consisting of VR (virtual reality) and six-channel videos, this installation restages conversations, speeches, andtexts of the philosophers of the Kyoto School, who advocated for overcoming Western modernity andspeculated on the value in establishing the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere. Voice of Void invites us tonavigate across different time-spaces and become immersed in discussions among members of the Kyoto
School, such as on the ethics of Japanese military ventures, the question of sacrificing one’s life for the nation,or founder Kitaro Nishida’s idea of “nothingness.”

4. CDOSEA (Critical Dictionary of Southeast Asia), screen capture, 2017-

5. Voice of Void, installation view, 2021 Photo: Ichiro Mishimaongoing

Image courtesy of Yamaguchi Center for Arts and Media

Image courtesy of the artist and Edouard Malingue Gallery[YCAM] and the artist

Contact

Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo｜ Public Relations (Kudo / Inaba / Uchibori)
E-MAIL: mot-pr@mot-art.jp

TEL: +81-3-5245-1134

https://www.mot-art-museum.jp/en*All Programs are subject to change.

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T for Time (2023) marks a new chapter in Ho’s practice. It will be shown in Japan for the very first time. Basedon an algorithm, the work generates sequences of images from multiple fragments of sampled footage toanimate various aspects and scales of time: from elementary particles to the life span of different organisms to
the vastness of the universe. The sequences evoke a multitude of meanings, sensations, and narratives, whilequestioning what is time, what mediates time, how do we experience it, and what could we imagine time tobe?

6. T for Time, video still, 2023-ongoing

7. T for Time: Timepieces, video still, 2023-ongoing

Image courtesy of the artist and Kiang Malingue

Image courtesy of the artist and Kiang Malingue

Ho Tzu Nyen
Ho Tzu Nyen was born in 1976 in Singapore, where he lives and works. His
films, film-based installations, and performances draw from a vast range ofcultural materials and discourse, which are repurposed into a visualmachinery that animates the entanglement and complexity of history,subjectivity, and power.
Ho’s recent solo exhibitions were held at Singapore Art Museum (2023),
Hammer Museum (Los Angeles, 2022), Toyota Municipal Museum of Art(Aichi, 2021–22), Crow Museum of Asian Art of the University of Texas atDallas (2021), Yamaguchi Center for Arts and Media (2021), Kunstverein inHamburg (2018), and Ming Contemporary Art Museum (Shanghai, 2018).
Ho Tzu Nyen / Photo: Matthew Teo

He represented Singapore at the 54th Venice Biennale in 2011. Ho’s recent

group exhibitions include Thailand Biennale (2023), Aichi Triennale (2019), 12th Gwangju Biennale (2018), and10th Shanghai Biennale (2014). His works have also been presented in numerous international theaters andfilm festivals, including Theater der Welt (2010, 2023), Holland Festival (2018, 2020), Berlin International Film
Festival (2015), Sundance Film Festival (2012), and 41st Directors’ Fortnight at the Cannes Film Festival (2009).
In 2019, Ho co-curated the 7th Asian Art Biennial with Taiwanese artist Hsu Chia-Wei at the National Taiwan
Museum of Fine Arts.

Contact

Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo｜ Public Relations (Kudo / Inaba / Uchibori)
E-MAIL: mot-pr@mot-art.jp

TEL: +81-3-5245-1134

https://www.mot-art-museum.jp/en*All Programs are subject to change.

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Information
Ho Tzu Nyen: A for Agents
Exhibition Period

Saturday, April 6 – Sunday, July 7, 2024

Opening Hours

10 AM –6 PM (tickets available until 30 minutes before closing)

ClosedMondays (except 29 Apr, 6 May), 30 Apr, 7 May

Venue

Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo, Exhibition Gallery B2F

Admission

To be announced.

Organized by

Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo operated by Tokyo Metropolitan
Foundation for History and Culture

Curated by

Che Kyongfa (Curator, Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo)

Concurrent Exhibitions
March 30 – July 7Tokyo Contemporary Art Award 2022-2024 Exhibition
April 6 – July 7
MOT Collection
April 18 – July 7
Where My Words Belong

Contact

Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo｜ Public Relations (Kudo / Inaba / Uchibori)
E-MAIL: mot-pr@mot-art.jp

TEL: +81-3-5245-1134

https://www.mot-art-museum.jp/en*All Programs are subject to change.

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Publicity Images

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MOT provides 7 publicity images to the press. Use of the images for any purpose requires prior permission ofthe museum. To request any image/s, please send an email to mot-pr@mot-art.jp with the caption numberof the desired image. You shall be deemed to have consented to our terms and conditions by submitting therequest.
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1

Utama—Every Name in History is I, video still, 2003

2

One or Several Tigers, video still, 2017

3The Nameless, video still, 2015

4

CDOSEA (Critical Dictionary of Southeast Asia), screen capture, 2017-ongoing
Image courtesy of the artist and Edouard Malingue Gallery

5

Voice of Void, installation view, 2021 Photo: Ichiro Mishima
Image courtesy of Yamaguchi Center for Arts and Media [YCAM] and the artist

6T for Time, video still, 2023-ongoing
Image courtesy of the artist and Kiang Malingue

7T for Time: Timepieces, video still, 2023-ongoing
Image courtesy of the artist and Kiang Malingue

Contact

Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo｜ Public Relations (Kudo / Inaba / Uchibori)
E-MAIL: mot-pr@mot-art.jp

TEL: +81-3-5245-1134

https://www.mot-art-museum.jp/en*All Programs are subject to change.

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