Hoo Fan Chon is a Malaysian visual art practitioner based in George Town, Penang. By reframing everyday life with irony and wry humour, his works observe the oscillations and toggles between social classes, the official and the informal, the highbrow and the lowbrow.

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Hoo Fan Chon (b. 1982) is a Malaysian visual art practitioner based in George Town, Penang. By reframing everyday life with irony and wry humour, his works observe oscillations and assimilations between social classes, the official and the informal, the highbrow and the lowbrow.

︎ email ︎ cv

Riding the Waves in Search of the Great Bird
駕浪尋鵬




Exhibitions:

The Foot Beneath The Flower: Camp. Kitsch. Art. Southeast Asia
2020 Aug, NTU ADM Gallery (Nanyang Technological University, SG)

Curated by Louis Ho

Biro Kaji Visual George Town
2019 Nov, Narrow Marrow (George Town, MY)

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Featured in Banned in KL, Astro Boy Rides the Wave to Sky Kingdom on A Grasshopper: Malaysia in Fifteen Postcards (Cloud Projects)

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Riding the waves in search of the great bird 駕浪尋鵬 (2019)
Wood sculpture with acrylic paint and gold leaf, single-channel video


Sculpture: 70 x 55 x 50 cm
Video: 7:39 min
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. Members of the public were initially mortified by his antics, responding by turning these into viral internet memes despite his genuine attempt at locating the missing aircraft. This sequence of events epitomises the schism between local folk belief systems and modern technology, and how we sometimes revert to the former when scientific attempts fail us. This work commemorates the Raja Bomoh’s efforts by symbolising him as a local deity in sculptural form, just like how certain local figures such as “Na Tuk Kong” were deified and have become commonly sightings in George Town.


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© Hoo Fan Chon