Gayle Chong Kwan is a London-based artist, whose large-scale photographic installation, sound, participatory, and video work is exhibited nationally and internationally, both in major institutions and in the public space.
Her work is an ongoing investigation into simulacra and the sublime, which she explores through constructed immersive environments and mises-en-scène. The personal and global politics of food and tourism is a major focus of her practice that is often specific to a context and linked to the exploration of histories, memory and senses. The artist's pieces take the viewer on a journey across countries and civilizations, exploring the relationship between food and culture, and underlying the importance of waste in giving measure to our lives.
She has exhibited her work internationally in various museums and galleries, including: La Biennale di Venezia (Venice, Italy); Fondation Valmont (Venice, Italy); Victoria & Albert Museum (London, UK); William Morris Gallery (London, UK); Barbican Centre (London, UK); Bloomberg Space (London, UK); Compton Verney (Warwickshire, UK); John Hansard Gallery (Southampton, UK); Salisbury International Arts Festival (Salisbury, UK); Havana Biennial (Havana, Cuba); Xiangning Art Museum (Shenzhen, China); St. Walburga Church Museum (Arnhem, Netherlands); Auckland Arts Festival (Auckland, New Zealand); Tai Kwun (Hong Kong); The Edge at Bath University (Bath, UK); Asia-Pacific Biennial (Berlin, Germany).
In 2023, she took part in the artistic residency Ulysses, between Hydra (Greece) and Venice (Italy), in view of an exhibition at Fondation Valmont (2024).
In 2019, the artist developed Waste Matters, a sustainable project in collaboration with Ca’ Foscari University, in Venice, as the winner of the Sustainable Art Prize 2019.
Moreover, in 2015, she was awarded the International Artist Award from the British Council.
During her PhD at the Royal College of Art, in London, she explored The Poetics and Ethics of Imaginal Travel, through two registers: of shared communal travel in social, sensory and spatial reality in relation to the island of Mauritius; and the individual or personal experience of hypnagogia and nyctalopia. She conducted her research through field trips to Mauritius, and conversations and collaborations with environmentalists, historians, archivists, philosophers and scientists.
