Hoo Fan Chon is a visual arts practitioner based in George Town, Penang. His research-driven projects are often set in local geographies and concern class aspiration, cultural identity, informal histories, and colonial legacy.
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✺ 2025 ✺ 2024 ✺ 2023 ✺ 2022 ✺ 2021 ✺ 2020 ✺ 2019 ✺ 2018 ✺ older works ✺ photography ✺ video ✺ painting ✺ sculpture ✺ installation ✺ writing ✺ george town ✺ archive ✺ fish ✺ durian ✺ badminton ✺
︎ email ︎ cv
✺ 2025 ✺ 2024 ✺ 2023 ✺ 2022 ✺ 2021 ✺ 2020 ✺ 2019 ✺ 2018 ✺ older works ✺ photography ✺ video ✺ painting ✺ sculpture ✺ installation ✺ writing ✺ george town ✺ archive ✺ fish ✺ durian ✺ badminton ✺
‘Familiar Strangers’ is a series of watercolour paintings based on found photographs...
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This work is part of a material experimentation series on the tropical fruit durian.
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Parking space is limited and sometimes contentious in George Town. Both the tourists and locals are constantly testing....
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The Homestead was inspired by the 16th-century Palladian Villa Valmarana, designed by Andrea Palladio...
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The Impossible Hand Gestures series is an ongoing series of paintings in which the artist practices ‘reverse machine learning’...
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The name Durian is derived from the Malay word ‘duri’ (thorn), and the suffix -an denotes a multitude of thorns...
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The Lee Chong Wei and Lin Dan rivalry (2004–2018) is hailed as one of the greatest in the history of Badminton...
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One way to understand an animal is to move like one. The common intertidal amphibious mudskipper, known locally as ikan belacak, used to be a sought-after local delicacy...
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This exhibition was the outcome of the Minatomachi AIR Exchange 2021, part of the Assembridge 2022 programme, a music and art festival in Nagoya, Japan...
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“...Hoo turns to Chinese culinary and dining culture in The World is Your Restaurant to consider not only the gamut of the visual lexicon that lends the banquet its whimsical qualities, but also the historical development of the local Sino-foodscape alongside the economic rise of KL...”
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Whether or not the Shachihoko 鯱鉾 is derived from the Makara मकर, the ancient Vedic hybrid sea creature, or Chiwen 螭吻, the Chinese dragon on imperial roof decorations, it is arguably one of Nagoya city’s most recognisable cultural symbols...
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The disappearance of Flight MH370 in 2014 inspired scientific excursions and occult ritual performances alike, including one by a local shaman, the so-called Raja Bomoh...
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As I was tidying up my studio during the current movement control order, I found a pile of paintings by Wu Ma, a self-taught artist who used to run a stall at the Acheen Street (Lebuh Acheh) flea market...
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Wah Fong photo studio was a household name at George Town, Penang, in the 1960s and the 1970s...
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BKVGT is a visual observation unit that focuses on various visual culture practices in George Town...
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This collaborative dubbing project invited members of the local Bulukumba (Sulawesi, Indonesia) community to voice over some scenes from popular Chinese films...
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Locals have found a way to appropriate coffee culture, creating a more conveniently consumed and affordable tonic drink infused with vernacular remedies, especially Tongkat Ali...
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This woodblock print was made to commemorate the Year of the Pig. Both an auspicious cultural symbol...
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This installation features “My Earthy Taste” (a music video), “My Earthiness, Your Tenderness” (a woodblock print) and other ancillary components...
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This music video is a collaboration with the singer-songwriter Tseng Zi-Yi, charting an attempt to inscribe the lowly regarded tilapia fish into the popular domain of the internet...
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This project intended to study Bangladeshi material culture through the sundry stores located outside of Hin Bus Depot by reappropriating a mobile food cart into a vending stall...
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‘Karma Karma Chameleons’ is a series of found photographs of female nightclub entertainers of the 80s...
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Recently, some government representatives told unhappy Malaysians to emigrate if they were displeased with the incumbent administration...
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By assuming the role of a modern day amateur antiquarian and anthropologist and informedby earlier figures of 18th and 19th centurytravelers and amateur naturalists...
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This work responds to the Willow Pattern invented by English craftsmen in the late eighteenth century...
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Jelly moulds were common exhibit in the batteries de cuisine of stately homes within the European milieu...
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...like many other East Asians, I develop Asian flush after alcohol consumption...
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