The Calling of Home: Cheong See Min, Marcos Kueh, Jennifer Tee, and Khairulddin Wahab

Cheong See Min (b. 1994, Johor, Malaysia) is a multidisciplinary artist currently practicing between Malaysia and Taiwan. Her work interrogates the relationship between nature and humans. See Min combines fiber, weaving, sculpture, and installation to create works grounded in nature and history, considering weaving an act of communication that mediates between past and present. Her recent practice is informed by research – both archival and anecdotal – into the colonial history of plantations in Malaysia and the cost of sustaining the production and export of commercial crops from Peninsula Malaysia to England.

See Min holds an MA from Tainan National University of Art in Taiwan (2020). She was shortlisted for Bakat Muda Sezaman Young Contemporaries (2019) and the International Biennale Exhibition of Micro Textile Art Scythia, Ukraine (2021). Her works have been shown in solo exhibition After the Pineapple at Warin Lab (2025, Thailand); Ames Yavuz Gallery at Art SG (2025, Singapore); Between the Lines at Appetite (2024, Singapore); A Seed, a Shift and a Lost Pineapple at Institutum (2023, Singapore); Communities in the Making at esea contemporary (2023, Manchester); The Labyrinths of Touch at Balai Seni Maybank (2023, Kuala Lumpur); and Filled in Absence at Yancheng Black & White Gallery (2021, Taiwan). Recent residencies include Islands Art Residency (Taichung, Taiwan, 2021), Rimbun Dahan (Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, 2022), and Gasworks (London, United Kingdom, 2023).

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.

Jennifer Tee is known for her experimental, interdisciplinary practice, unencumbered by delineations in form. Working in an array of mediums such as tulip petal collages, ceramic domes, knitted floor pieces, and pineapple cloth tapestries, all of Tee’s works point toward the vulnerable relationship between nature and culture, language and perception, beauty and destruction, while exploring how all of these ideas play into questions of land rights, nationality, belonging, and ecology. Her quixotic environments can often be activated, engendering their own rituals.

Tee is widely celebrated for her Tampan Tulips, a series of collages made from pressed tulip petals, with motifs taken from the Tampan, square-shaped woven cloths that were exchanged during important rites of passage. Tampan are found in the Lampung region of southern Sumatra, a crucial trade route since antiquity, a crossroads of cultures and traditions. Predominantly featuring ships with a mast that often branches out into a tree of life, the tampan is evocative of human souls continuing onto new lives. The reference to migration is of particular interest to Tee, as her father migrated with his parents and sister to the Netherlands from Indonesia on a ship in the 1950s. The geometric and mirrored patterns visualize the orders of society as well as the universe and are seen as portals leading from the material to the spiritual world.

Jennifer Tee (1973) lives and works in Amsterdam, NL. She was a resident artist at the Rijksakademie in Amsterdam, NL, and ISCP, New York, US. Tee was awarded the Amsterdam Prize for the Arts, 2020. Recent solo exhibitions include: Still Shifting, Mother Field, Secession, AT; DRIFT, multilingual performance choreography, Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, NL; Ether Plane ~ Material Plane, ISCP, New York, US; Let it Come Down, Bonner Kunstverein, Bonn, DE; Let it Come Down, Camden Arts Centre, London, UK; Structures of Recollections and Perseverance, Kunstraum, London, UK; Tulip Palepai, Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, NL; The Soul in Limbo, 6th Cobra Art Prize, Cobra Museum, Amstelveen, NL; Occult Geometry, Kunsthal Charlottenborg, Copenhagen, DK; Practical Magic, Project Art Centre Gallery Dublin, IR; Local Myths, Eastside Projects, Birmingham, UK; and Nameless Swirls, an Unfolding in Presence, Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven, NL. Selection of group shows and biennials: The 13th Liverpool Biennale, Lahore Biennale 03, the 33rd Istanbul Biennial, the São Paulo Bienale, São Paulo, BR, Retour sur Mulholland Drive, La Panacée, Montpelier, FR, What people do for money, Manifesta 11, Zurich CH, The Peacock, Grazer Kunstverein, AT, Six Possibilities for a Sculpture, La Loge, Brussels BE, Beyond Imagination, Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam NL, Secret Societies, Schirn Kunsthalle, Frankfurt DE, Nether Land, Dutch Culture Center, Shanghai World Expo; Sao Paulo Biennial.

Khairulddin Wahab was born in Singapore in 1990 and he received his BFA from Lasalle College of the Arts, Singapore, in 2014. Drawing on Southeast Asia’s rich cultural geography, environmental history, and its colonial past, Khairulddin Wahab’s work explores the region’s complex relationship with its natural environment and the historical forces that have shaped it. He has exhibited in presentations at the Singapore Art Museum (2023), AsiaNow Paris (2024), and Jogja Biennale, Indonesia (2019). His artwork is part of the collections of notable institutions, including the Singapore Art Museum, Kadist Art Foundation, and the X Museum (Beijing).