For Bozar, Ho Tzu Nyen is creating a new work titled P for Power, which builds upon his earlier work The Critical Dictionnary of Southeast Asia. At a moment in which the notion of power is being challenged and reconsidered, not least in the light of worldwide challenges to democracy but also in relation to developments in AI, his work dares to face pressing political and philosophical issues head-on.
Two other large-scale installations are presented at Bozar and map out the artist’s vision.
T for Time (2023) is a one-hour real-time video installation in which Ho examines Time as both a working material and an elusive concept. Across two overlapping screens, algorithmically altered found footage and hand-drawn animated after-images unfold in chapters that move from global clock standardisation to intimate family stories, accompanied by a continuous solo saxophone. Rather than providing answers, the work opens a series of questions about Time as a lens for understanding Southeast Asia’s cultural differences.
“Sometimes I think that the true medium I work with is time itself”, says Ho Tzu Nyen. “After all, one could say that moving images like films and videos are just attempts to give shape to time.”
Time Pieces extends this reflection through an installation of 43 screens of varying sizes and durations. Bringing together videos, animations, apps, and digital models, the installation explores multiple ways of measuring and imagining Time, from fleeting one-second loops to 24-hour cycles, forming a deliberately unruly celebration of Time’s heterogeneity.
“Together, the three works invite viewers into Ho Tzu Nyen’s favourite terrain” says Emma Dumartheray, Curatorial Project Coordinator, “a space where ideas connect, multiply, collide, and keep changing.”
Mapping Southeast Asia’s plural identities
Steeped in numerous Eastern and Western cultural references ranging from art history to theatre and from cinema to music to philosophy, Ho Tzu Nyen’s works blend mythical narratives and historical facts to mobilise different understandings of history, its writing and its transmission. The central theme of his œuvre is a long-term investigation of the plurality of cultural identities in Southeast Asia, a region so multifaceted in terms of its languages, religions, cultures and influences that it is impossible to reduce it to a simple geographical area. This observation as to the history of this region of the world is reflected in his pieces which weave together different regimes of knowledge, narratives and representations.
A formative bond with Brussels
Brussels holds a deeply personal place in Ho Tzu Nyen’s life and artistic practice, marked by formative encounters. He first came to the city at the invitation of Christophe Slagmuylder and the late Frie Leysen to present one of his earliest projects at Kunstenfestivaldesarts in 2006 [with his first film Utama – Every Name in History is I]. Brussels is also inseparable from Ho’s childhood imagination, as the home of Tintin and Snowy, figures that embody curiosity, questioning, and the joy of discovery.
About the artist
Multidisciplinary artist Ho Tzu Nyen was born in 1976 in Singapore, where he lives and works. He has been appointed Artistic Director of the 16th Gwangju Biennale in 2026. Ho Tzu Nyen is the winner of the CHANEL Next Prize 2024, and the Art Basel Awards 2025 as "Established Artist". He was also ranked on 5th position in the Art Review Power 100, the annual ranking of the most influential people in art.
Current and recent shows include:
- MUDAM: Time & the Tiger, 14.02.2025 - 24.08.2025
- LUMA Arles, Jour spectral et contes étranges, 05.07.2025 - 11.01.2026
- Neugerriemschneider, Berlin: 2 stories: voids & times, 12.09.2025 - 21.03.2026
- Hamburg Kunsthalle: Time & the Tiger, 21.11.2025 - 12.04.2026
Curatorial Project Coordinator: Emma Dumartheray
Support: NextGenerationEU
Artist's biography
Ho Tzu Nyen
Ho Tzu Nyen was born in 1976 in Singapore, where he lives and works.
Rooted in the histories, mythologies and political impulses of Southeast Asia, Ho Tzu Nyen’s multilayered audiovisual practice fuses scripted narratives and machine learning to shape environments that mine the region’s colonial legacies, their spirits of resistance and their strategies of ambiguity.
One-person exhibitions of his work have been held at LUMA, Arles (2025), Mudam Museum of Modern Art (2025), Hessel Museum of Art (2024), Art Sonje Center (2024), Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo (2024), Singapore Art Museum (2023), Hammer Museum (2022), Toyota Municipal Museum of Art (2021), Crow Museum of Asian Arts (2021), Yamaguchi Center for Arts and Media [YCAM] (2021), Edith-Russ-Haus for Media Art (Oldenburg, 2019), Kunstverein in Hamburg (2018), Ming Contemporary Art Museum [McaM] (Shanghai, 2018), Asia Art Archive (2017), Guggenheim Bilbao (2015), Mori Art Museum, (2012), The Substation (Singapore, 2003). He represented the Singapore Pavilion at the 54th Venice Biennale (2011).
Ho Tzu Nyen has been appointed Artistic Director of the 16th Gwangju Biennale in 2026. He is the winner of CHANEL Next Prize 2024, and the Art Basel Awards 2025 as "Established Artist". He was also ranked on 5th position in the Art Review Power 100, the annual ranking of the most influential people in art.
