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. By reframing everyday life with irony and wry humour, his works observe the oscillations and assimilations between social classes, the official and the informal, the highbrow and the lowbrow.

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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.

︎ email ︎ cv

20252024202320222021202020192018older worksphotographyvideopaintingsculptureinstallationwritinggeorge townarchivefishdurianbadminton

Chowdry Stall





OPEN GATE
2015 Jun, Hin Bus Depot (George Town, MY)

Curated by Sachiko M, 
a project by Japan Foundation Asia Center

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Chowdry Store
Customised mobile food cart; assorted sundry goods and snacks; dimensions variable, 2015


Mobile cart customization: Trevor Hampson, Alex Lee

Project advisor / assistant: Md. Mahedi

Zine: HASA / Hasanul Isyraf Idris
I have long been intrigued by the visual explosion of diminutive items in shop displays. This project reimagines display and exchange as a system for negotiating value and function while enjoying carefully packaged commodities. Installed at the former Hin Bus Depot — now one of Penang’s most active art hubs — the mobile food cart operates as a self-service vending stall selling the same retail items and prices as neighbouring sundry stores. Located on Jalan Gurdwara, an area with a sizable Bangladeshi population, the project investigates Bangladeshi material culture through everyday objects: snacks, household goods and entertainment paraphernalia are presented as both commodity and social text.

Chowdury Stall also features a multilingual zine for the Bangladeshi readers, Kakrol (lit. “spiny gourd”), made by HASA / Hasanul Isyraf Idris. This zine was inspired by the practical English- and Malay-language phrasebook made for the newly arrived migrant workers.


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© Hoo Fan Chon