Ho Tzu Nyen has won the Fukuoka Grand Prize, the Japanese award which recognises individuals who have significantly contributed to the fields of Asian studies and Asian arts and culture. The Singaporean artist is the first from his country to win the ¥5 million (£23,400) award, now in its thirty-sixth edition.
Ho’s installations often address the layered multiplicities of Southeast Asian cultures, invoking history, ghosts and mythologies. While often drawing on theatrical and documentary techniques, recent works have made increasing use of the possibilities of digital animation. His ongoing project, The Critical Dictionary of Southeast Asia, seeks to document the fact, fiction, various indigenous and colonial intrigues and ideologies that comprise the modern historical narrative of the subregion. In 2019 he curated the Asian Art Biennial in Taiwan and is currently organising the forthcoming Gwangju Biennale, due to open in September.
Alongside Ho, the Filipina author, literary critic and cultural historian Caroline Sy Hau won the Fukuoka Academic Prize, and Thai dancer and choreographer Pichet Klunchun won the Arts and Culture Prize.
Hau’s books include Necessary Fictions: Philippine Literature and the Nation, 1946-1980 (2000), On the Subject of the Nation: Filipino Writings from the Margins, 1981 to 2004 (2004), and her more recent fiction, including a mythological collection of short stories, Demigods and Monsters: Stories (2019), and her novel, Tiempo Muerto (Dead Season/Dead Time) (2019). Klunchun’s work engages with a contemporary interpretation of ‘khon’, Thailand’s classical masked dance-drama.
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