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 galleries 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.
A selection of her recent exhibition includes: The Taotie, Compton Verney, Warwickshire, UK (2024); A Pocket Full of Sand, commissioned and supported by John Hansard Gallery and Film and Video Umbrella, John Hansard Gallery, Southampton, UK (2024); Island Life, Salisbury International Arts Festival, UK (2022); PETER PAN. LA NÉCESSITÉ DU RÊVE, a group show curated by Francesca Giubilei and Luca Berta at Valmont Foundation, in Venice (2022); Working: Women In Art Practice, He Xiangning Art Museum, Shenzhen, China (2021); Dream Tapestry, a communal tapestry of dreams created during the Covid-19 emergency in partnership with the London Borough of Waltham Forest (2020); Capturing Motion, photography residency, Victoria & Albert Museum, London (2019); STORMY WEATHER, site-specific installation, St Walburga Church Museum Arnhem, Netherlands (2019); Wastescape: Weaving Landscapes of Politics, Dairy, and Waste at Auckland Arts Festival in New Zealand (2019); Quarantine Archipelago at Tai Kwun n Hong Kong (2019); Preserved, commissioned by Nuit Blanches for the City of Toronto (2018); Experiential Ecology, The Edge at Bath University, UK (2019); The People's Forest at William Morris Gallery (2018) and at Barbican Centre (2017), in London, Microclimate commissioned by Invisible Dust (2018) and Anthropo-scene at Bloomberg Space (2015). The artist is also developing a sustainable project in collaboration with Ca’ Foscari University, in Venice, as the winner of the Sustainable Art Prize 2019.
In 2023 she has participated to the artistic residency Ulysses between Hydra (Greece) and Venice (Italy), in view of an exhibition at Fondation Valmont, Venice, from April 2024.
Moreover, she was awarded the International Artist Award from the British Council. She also took part in the Asia-Pacific Biennial in Berlin, in the 54º Biennale di Venezia in 2011 and in the 10º Havana Biennial in 2009.
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.
