Marcos Kueh (b. 1995, Sarawak)is a textile artist who has a background in graphic design and
advertising. Growing up in a post-colonial developing country, he has always been fascinated about
his identity as Malaysian and his place in the larger discourses of the West. His practice mainly
revolves around using textiles as a tool to encapsulate day-to-day stories that he finds meaningful -
just as the ancestors of Borneo did with their dreams and legends, before the arrival of written
alphabets from the West.
In many of his artistic research projects, he explores on the spectacle of how his country is being
perceived - from colonial descriptions in anthropological museums around the world, to marketing
texts in tourism advertisements, versus his lived experiences as a human from a small town in
Borneo, navigating through mundane expectations to progress as a modern citizen in a gradual,
uniform, globalized world. These perspectives shape the fundamental world views of how he
participates and contributes to discussions.
Adapting from the fundamentals of traditional graphic design craftmanship and the smart wits of
advertising philosophies, Kueh describes his works as woven posters and billboards. Using
keywords that evoke connotations to the third-world such as laborious, complicated and traditional,
he meticulously crafts his larger than life posters by incorporating graphics and texts that describe a
reality where the subject matter is usually of the other, and messages are intentionally layered.
Through his work, he wishes for the public to reconsider how we fashion our reality through the
visuals and texts that we consume – how it affects the way we see and speak to ourselves and how
we perceive and describe others.
Kueh completed his Foundation in Design from The One Academy in 2014, his Diploma in Graphic
Design under Dasein Academy of Art in 2017, Bachelors in Graphic Design and Bachelors in Textile
design under The Royal Academy of Art, The Hague in 2022.
Kueh started his artistic career in late summer of 2022, where he was awarded the Ron Mandos
Young Blood Award, and his works were acquired by Museum Voorlinden in Wassenaar, and
Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam. Subsequently, Kueh was also named the Young Designer of 2023
by the Dutch Design Awards. Some key exhibitions where his works have been included are the
Rijswijk Textile Biennale, the 15th edition of the Manifesta Biennale in Barcelona, Kunstinstituut Melly
in Rotterdam and the National Art Gallery Malaysia in Kuala Lumpur. Kueh has also participated in
Art Rotterdam, the Armory Show in New York, ASIANOW in Paris, Unknown Asia in Osaka, Art
Jakarta and ArtSG in Singapore.