Ho Tzu Nyen: A for Agents

Map & Timetable
How to Experience the VR Part of "Voice of Void"
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, and documentation, rearranged into abstract yet evocative images, his work renders the complexities of geopolitical histories palpable. Ho’s work has been presented in numerous art institutions and biennials as well as theaters and film festivals worldwide. In Japan, he has participated in exhibitions including Time of Others 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 Arts and Media (YCAM) in 2021, and Toyota Municipal Museum of Art in 2021–22.

This latest exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo, Ho Tzu Nyen: A for Agents, traces the trajectory of the artist’s practice, presenting six film-based installations alongside a new work. The exhibition includes Ho’s earliest video installation, Utama—Every Name in History Is I (2003), which challenges the modern narrative of Singapore’s foundations by tracing its precolonial origin to Sang Nila Utama, who is said to have named the land “Singapura” (Lion City, in Sanskrit). Singapore’s past also features in One or Several Tigers (2017), where 3D animations of a tiger and a human morph 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 and the “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 to speculate on two enigmatic individuals from Malaya’s tumultuous political past. The Nameless sheds light on 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, who authored publications on the Malayan Communist Party using highly classified information—some believe him to be a ghostwriter.
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 and resists 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, and texts of the philosophers of the Kyoto School, who advocated for overcoming Western modernity and speculated on the value in establishing the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere. Voice of Void invites us to navigate 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.”

T for Time (2023) marks a new chapter in Ho’s practice. It will be shown in Japan for the very first time. Based on an algorithm, the work generates sequences of images from multiple fragments of sampled footage to animate 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, while questioning what is time, what mediates time, how do we experience it, and what could we imagine time to be?

Ho Tzu Nyen | Profile

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 of cultural materials and discourse, which are repurposed into a visual machinery 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 at Dallas (2021), Yamaguchi Center for Arts and Media (2021), Kunstverein in Hamburg (2018), and Ming Contemporary Art Museum (Shanghai, 2018). 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), and 10th Shanghai Biennale (2014). His works have also been presented in numerous international theaters and film 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.

How to Experience the VR Part of "Voice of Void"

"Voice of Void" comprises three video installations (each 7’45” long) and a VR experience. The video installations are accessible in the gallery, while the VR experience requires an application. To experience the VR part, please book online or apply onsite.

- Age Requirement: Ages 10 and over (Ages 10-12 require parental consent.)
- For the VR experience, an admission ticket to Ho Tzu Nyen: A for Agents is required with the application. For the details, please check here.
- The VR experience is available in the Exhibition Gallery B2F daily during the exhibition period, except on closing days.
- Please book up to one ticket per person.

BOOK ONLINE
Please book via Peatix on a first-come, first-served basis until reaching the capacity.

BOOK NOW on Peatix (June 8 - June 28)
BOOK NOW on Peatix (June 29 - July 7)
*Redirects to the external site of the MOT.

APPLY ONSITE
Please pick up a booking ticket that will be handed in the Exhibition Gallery B2F. Booking tickets will be handed out on the day from 10:00 am on a first-come, first-served basis, until reaching the capacity.

*All programs are subject to change.

Exhibition Catalogue

Now available at the museum shop and on NADiff online.
Composed around seven works in the exhibition, the catalogue includes installation views, video stills, key documents produced during the creation of works, four essays that decipher the complexity of Ho’s works, as well as texts previously written by the artist.

Artist Interview

Related Program

Artist Talk 　*Consecutive interpretation available (English/Japanese)
Date: Sunday, 7 April
Time: 3 - 4:30 pm
Venue: Auditorium (B2 floor)
Fee: Free with an exhibition ticket valid on the day

Ho Tzu Nyen will give a talk on the topic that centred around the question "What is time?"

Lecture by David Teh - Mandala Montage: medium, region and the state in the work of Ho Tzu Nyen
Date: Sunday, 23 June
Time: 3 - 4:30 p.m.
Venue: Auditorium (B2 floor)
Fee: Free

From mythical kings and were-tigers, war-time spooks and philosophers, to the engineers of Empire, the works of Ho Tzu Nyen take in a dizzying montage of Asian histories. In this talk, critic and curator David Teh will offer some key contexts for understanding Ho’s oeuvre, addressing his critical reimagining of Southeast Asia, his complex relationship to the nation-state, and his reflexive approach to media.

Exhibition Flyer (PDF)