Ho Tzu Nyen (; born 1976) is a Singaporean contemporary artist and filmmaker whose works involve film, video, performance, and immersive multimedia installations. His work brings together fact and myth to mobilise different understandings of Southeast Asia's history, politics, and religion, often premised upon a complex set of references from art history, to theatre, cinema, and philosophy. Ho has shown internationally at major exhibitions such as the Aichi Triennale, Japan (2019), the Sharjah Biennial 14, United Arab Emirates (2019), and the Gwangju Biennale, South Korea (2018). In 2011, Ho represented Singapore at the 54th Venice Biennale at the Singapore Pavilion, presenting the work The Cloud of Unknowing.
Ho has been collected by institutions such as the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York, and participated in several international film festivals, such as the 41st Directors' Fortnight at the Cannes Film Festival in France (2009) and the Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah (2012).
Ho co-curated the 2019 Asian Art Biennial at the National Taiwan Museum of Fine Arts alongside Taiwanese artist, Hsu Chia-wei. Ho was featured on the 2019 edition of the ArtReview Power 100 list, which charts the most influential individuals working in contemporary art internationally.
Education and personal life
Ho was born in Singapore in 1976. From 1998 to 2001, Ho studied art at the School of Creative Arts, Victorian College of the Arts, University of Melbourne, Australia, obtaining his Bachelor of Creative Arts (Dean’s List). Later from 2003 to 2007, Ho studied at the Southeast Asian Studies Programme at the National University of Singapore, obtaining a Master of Arts (by Research). Ho currently lives and works in Singapore.
Career
Early projects
In 2003, at his solo exhibition at The Substation, Singapore, Ho presented Utama—Every Name in History is I. The titular work involved a video installation and twenty portrait paintings that re-examined the 14th-century figure of Sang Nila Utama as the pre-colonial founder of Singapore, in relation to the histories of other regional founders. Ho would present the project as a lecture in a number of pre-tertiary and tertiary educational institutions in Singapore, which included discussions of the process of making the work, as well as the larger historical contexts in which the origin myths are embedded. After repeated deliveries, the lecture's scope further expanded, along with the formalisation of its mode of presentation as a scripted performance, and Ho would be invited to present the lecture performance at a number of theatrical events and performing arts festivals, first abroad, then in Singapore.
Interested in establishing a history of contemporary art for Singapore, Ho produced 4x4—Episodes of Singapore Art, a series of four documentaries that was aired on national television in 2005. Each episode focused on a work of art produced by a Singaporean artist, featuring Cheong Soo Pieng, Cheo Chai-Hiang, Tang Da Wu, and Lim Tzay Chuen. In 2006, Ho completed Sejarah Singapura, a commission for the National Museum of Singapore that features an immersive, panoramic audiovisual representation of precolonial Singapore. During the inaugural Singapore Biennale in 2006, Ho was commissioned to create The Bohemian Rhapsody Project, a work composed of audition footage that was shot within the former Supreme Court of Singapore, the site where the biennale was being held.
Continued performances and films
Ho produced The King Lear Project (2007-08), a four-part theatrical series that staged critical essays about King Lear, rather than Shakespeare’s original version of the play. In 2009, Ho completed the feature film, HERE. Stylistically moving between a documentary format and fictional scenes, the film is set in a mental institution, featuring a protagonist undergoing an experimental “videocure” treatment, a plot inspired by the writings of French theorist Félix Guattari. With HERE, Ho would participate in numerous international film festivals in 2009, including the 41st Directors' Fortnight at the 62nd Cannes Film Festival in France, the 14th Busan International Film Festival in South Korea, the 26th Warsaw Film Festival in Poland, and the 16th Oldenburg International Film Festival in Germany, among others.