Heather Dewey-Hagborg @ Wei-Ling Gallery, Kuala Lumpur - Closer Than Your Family

Heather Dewey-Hagborg

Closer Than Your Family

Wei-Ling Gallery, Kuala Lumpur

18 March – 15 April 2023

Wei-Ling Gallery hosts a much anticipated exhibition by the prominent and critically-acclaimed artist Heather Dewey-Hagborg with her exhibition entitled, ‘Closer Than Your Family’, which is her first solo exhibition in Malaysia.

This solo show by artist Heather Dewey-Hagborg features recent works that examine how cutting-edge developments in biotechnology are raising fundamental questions about what it means to be human.

Watson’s Ghost interrogates the interpretation of genetic data, presenting hundreds of interpretations of a single individual’s face based on their DNA. Lovesick presents a custom retrovirus designed to infect humans, irrevocably altering their genomes to make them more loving. Hybrid: an Interspecies Opera transforms research around xenotransplantation – the genetic engineering of pigs to supply human organs–into a musical tribute to the creatures giving their lives for these scientific advances. Finally, Future pigs, plural, builds on the research from Hybrid to present a set of speculative portraits of pigs in the future, if human modification continues along the trajectory of today.

Together these works probe the ways human beings are multitudes, via the subjectivity of interpretation, their genetic mutability, and their increasingly chimeric proximity to non-human animals.

HEATHER DEWEY-HAGBORG (b.1982) is an artist and biohacker who is interested in art as research and technological critique. Her controversial biopolitical art practice includes the project Stranger Visions in which she created portrait sculptures from analyses of genetic material (hair, cigarette butts, chewed up gum) collected in public places.

Heather  Dewey-Hagborg has shown work internationally at events and venues including the World Economic Forum, the Daejeon Biennale, the Guangzhou Triennial, and the Shenzhen Urbanism and Architecture Biennale, Transmediale, the Walker Center for Contemporary Art, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, and PS1 MoMA. Her work is held in public collections of the Centre Pompidou, the Victoria and Albert Museum, SFMoMA, among others, and has been widely discussed in the media, from the New York Times and the BBC to Art Forum and Wired.

Heather Dewey-Hagborg has a PhD in Electronic Arts from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. She is an Artist-in-Residence at the Exploratorium, and is an affiliate of Data & Society. She is a founding board member of Digital DNA, a European Research Council funded project investigating the changing relationships between digital technologies, DNA and evidence.

She is also a co-founder and co-curator of REFRESH, an inclusive and politically engaged collaborative platform at the intersection of Art, Science, and Technology.

Exhibition is open by appointment only.

WEI-LING GALLERY

8 Jalan Scott, Brickfields, 50470 Kuala Lumpur

weiling-gallery.com

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Young Contemporaries: chi too, minstrel kuik, poodien at Valentine Willie Fine Art, Kuala Lumpur

3YC - 3 Young Contemporaries: chi too, minstrel kuik, poodien
Valentine Willie Fine Art, Kuala Lumpur
22 October - 13 November 2010

3 Young Contemporaries, at Valentine Willie Fine Art, Kuala Lumpur, is an annual exhibition programme that showcases the work of young and emerging artists in Southeast Asia. Purposefully seeking out vibrant and challenging creative visions the programme aims to provide an important platform for new ideas in a substantial and focused manner. Rather than a mixed regional selection this year also focuses exclusively on Malaysian artists: chi too, minstrel kuik and poodien to explore the concerns of new talent in Kuala Lumpur.

As a photographer minstrel kuik (b. 1976) interrogates the status of both her medium and subject matter. Inspired by the need to understand, deconstruct and reinvent notions of home, cultural identity and photography itself she takes multiple images of her family and hometown to create a visual community of images which are displayed in various ways and formations. Interrogating individuality, collectivity, gender and social structures through both photography and an intricate textile piece she expands the boundaries of her chosen medium, its display and language as well as notions of diaspora, family, personal and public critique.

chi too (b. 1981) has recently shifted his focus from film making to fine art practice using humour, satire and visual poetics to create a diverse system of objects that reveal his own never ending emotional struggles. Working in video, installation and sculpture, his practice rejects socio- political statements for personal reflections and frustrations. His experimental music, poetry reading and playful public events such as Main Dengan Rakyat and Lepark display a genuine need to engage with audiences and form part of his complex multifaceted approach to practice.

poodien (b.1979) fills the gallery space with mechanical toys in order to orchestrate an elaborate performance that explores the life and death of objects. His interest in politics, performance, painting and articulating differences, form part of an eclectic and unique vision. Citing influences from cult film maker Alejandro Jodorowsky, for the exhibition he creates interactive situations that implicate and engage audiences in a surreal, macabre and spontaneous happening.

Such diverse bodies of practice and ideologies confront viewers with personal and artistic curiosities, comedies, satires and provocations by Malaysian artists who are constantly developing and pushing their practice. Their shared locality has meant that all three have been able to discuss their ideas more closely than ever before to create an integrated experimental exhibition that weaves multiple threads, energies, objects and performances together to create an exciting presentation for this year's 3 Young Contemporaries at Valentine Willie’s fine art gallery in Kuala Lumpur.

VALENTINE WILLIE FINE ART, KUALA LUMPUR

www.vwfa.net