Ho Tzu Nyen

SingaporeArtists

Biography

Steeped in numerous Eastern and Western cultural references ranging from art history and theatre to cinema, music, and philosophy, Ho Tzu Nyen's works blend myth and history to generate new ways of understanding history, its writing, and its transmission. A central concern of his practice is the plurality of cultural identities in Southeast Asia—a region so diverse in its languages, religions, cultures, and histories that it resists reduction to any singular geographical, political, or historical framework. In recent years, he has increasingly incorporated algorithmic systems, artificial intelligence, and real-time computational processes into his practice, bringing these technologies into dialogue with unfinished historical questions—particularly those concerning colonialism, memory, and power. By engaging their distinctive logics of sequencing, association, and generation, his works explore emerging ontologies of image-making in which images are no longer fixed representations of the past but dynamic processes of relation and transformation. Technology thus becomes not merely a medium for revisiting history, but a means of reconfiguring the conditions through which history can be perceived, narrated, and imagined. Selected solo exhibitions held at: BOZAR, Belgium (2026); Hamburger Kunsthalle, Germany (2025); LUMA Arles, France (2025); Mudam Luxembourg (2025); Hessel Museum of Art, New York, USA (2024); Art Sonje Center, South Korea (2024); Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo, Japan (2024); Singapore Art Museum (2023); Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, USA (2022); Toyota Municipal Museum of Art, Japan (2021); Yamaguchi Center for Arts and Media [YCAM], Japan (2021); Edith-Russ-Haus for Media Art, Germany (2019); Kunstverein in Hamburg, Germany (2018); Asia Art Archive, Hong Kong (2017); Guggenheim Bilbao, Spain (2015); Mori Art Museum, Japan (2012); The Substation, Singapore (2003). He represented Singapore at the 54th Venice Biennale in 2011. Recent group exhibitions include Shéhérazade, at night, at Palais de Tokyo, Paris (2022), Rubiyat, at Mathaf, Qatar (2022); Nation, Narration, Narcosis: Collecting Entanglements and Embodied Histories, at Hamburger Bahnhof - Museum für Gegenwart – Berlin, Germany (2021) the Aichi Triennale (2019); 12th Gwangju Biennale (2018); 2 or 3 Tigers at the Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin (2017), the 10th Shanghai Biennale (2014); the 2nd Kochi-Muziris Biennale (2014). His theatrical works have been presented at festivals such as TPAM (Yokohama, Japan, 2021, 2019, 2018); The Holland Festival (Amsterdam, 2020, 2018); Wiener Festwochen (2020, 2014); Theater der Welt (2010); the KunstenFestivaldesArts (2006, 2008, 2018). His films have been presented at the Berlin (2015); Sundance (2012); Cannes (2009) and Venice (2009) film Festivals. Together with Taiwanese artist Hsu Chia-wei, he also co-curated ‘The Strangers from Beyond the Mountain and the Sea’, the 7th Asian Art Biennale, at the National Taiwan Museum of Fine Arts. Some of the film festivals that have presented his work include the 41st Director’s Fortnight, Cannes International Film Festival (France, 2009), 66th Venice International Film Festival (Italy, 2009), 39th Rotterdam International Film Festival (The Netherlands, 2009), 14th Pusan International Film Festival (South Korea, 2009), 44th Karlovy Vary International Film Festival, 64th Locarno International Film Festival (Switzerland, 2011), 42nd Rotterdam International Film Festival (The Netherlands, 2012), Sundance Film Festival (USA, 2012). Ho was named an Established Artist medalist at the Art Basel Awards in 2025, received the CHANEL Next Prize in 2024, and will receive the Grand Prize of the Fukuoka Prize in 2026. He was appointed Artistic Director of the 16th Gwangju Biennale, which will open in September 2026.

Archive records · BUNA vol. 4 / 2026

The Bohemian Rhapsody Project, 2006, single channel video, stereo sound, 6 min 52 sec

Artists

Gallery / Collective: gallery representation: Kiang Malingue and neugerriemschneider

The Bohemian Rhapsody Project is a video with a script based entirely on the lyrics of the legendary hit song ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ by the British rock band Queen. Set in the former Supreme Court of Singapore, we witness the trial of a boy about to be sentenced to death. But the boy is played by multiple actors of all races, and the lyrics of the song begin to take on an added layer of meaning in Singapore, a country with the second highest per capita rate of capital punishment in the world. As with all of Ho’s work, The Bohemian Rhapsody Project begins with an existing cultural artifact (the song by Queen) and transforms it to produce a new artwork, with new meanings. The process of making the video itself functions can be understood as a conceptual and critical rethinking of the standard procedures of filmmaking. Advertisements were sent out to announce a 3-day audition to be held in the former Supreme Court-room of Singapore for the lead actor of an upcoming film marketed as being based on British band Queen’s well-known hit, Bohemian Rhapsody. The film never materialized (nor was it meant to), but the resulting audition footage, edited to the original duration and rhythmic structure of the song, became a musical courtroom drama that was also a record of its own making. In this work, the present melts into the past and fiction dissolves into fact. The anxiety of the auditioning actors becomes conflated with the terror of criminals on trial, just as the judgment of the director fuses with the life-and-death judgment of the court.