Ho Tzu Nyen: The Critical Dictionary of Southeast Asia Volume 10: N for Nameless

24 January–6 September 2020

Ho Tzu Nyen: The Critical Dictionary of Southeast Asia Volume 10: N for Nameless

Ho Tzu Nyen’s The Critical Dictionary of Southeast Asia Volume 10: N for Nameless originally opened at CFCCA in January 2020, but was cut short due to our COVID-19 closure. CFCCA are pleased to announce the exhibition will reopen on Wednesday 2nd September.

Ho Tzu Nyen uses historical texts and artifacts to create unique films, video pieces, installations and theatre works that have been shown worldwide from Guggenheim, New York to the Venice Biennale. His long-term project, The Critical Dictionary of Southeast Asia (CDOSEA) focuses on Southeast Asia’s colonial histories and national identities. In an attempt to overcome national borders and articulate the possibility of another collective identity for the region, he collects metaphors, sounds, biographies and narratives left out of the official history books. As a result, an extensive archive of thousands of hours of audiovisual material has emerged which Ho presents online as a virtual, critical dictionary. CDOSEA proposes 26 terms — one for each letter of the Latin alphabet. Each term is a concept, a motif, or a biography, and together they question, problematise, and address the complexity in defining Southeast Asia.

In this exhibition, Ho includes CDOSEA and two further works from the CDOSEA encyclopedic series: The Nameless (2014) and The Name (2015).