The Back Room is pleased to announce our upcoming exhibition and our last exhibition of the year. Titled Favouritism Is My Favourite -Ism, this group show will be produced by the artist chi too and will feature 11 artists at varying stages of their careers. As the title may suggest, the exhibition compiles 11 of his favourite artists, namely: Binti, CC Kua, Dipali Gupta, Foo May Lyn, Hoo Fan Chon, Jerome Kugan, Jun Kit, Liew Kwai Fei, Siti Gunong, Syahnan Anuar, and Wong Hoy Cheong.

The inception of the show’s premise is drawn from chi too’s own observations and experiences as an art worker in the Malaysian art scene. It marks the first time that chi too has produced an exhibition that is not his own. chi too, who works as a project manager for a private art museum and has been active as an artist in Kuala Lumpur since the late 00s, has always had a healthy skepticism towards the prestige and power that curators wield in the art world, observing that most shows that feature a curator byline are merely roll calls of the curator’s (or gallery’s) favourite artists. In alignment with the aims of chi too’s own art practice, the present show’s title and its premise poke fun at the conceits, assumptions, and everyday delusions of grandeur with which people flatter themselves. It pokes holes through the language that people use to ascribe importance to their work (and being important is a particular worry for art world professionals, who are aware of their industry’s recreational status in the wider function of society) and bluntly delivers the obvious in such a way that the delusions no longer seem tenable.

On a secondary level, the show also serves as a snapshot into the artists who emerged around the Central Market Annexe milieu during its heyday of the late 00s. Wong Hoy Cheong was a large influence on chi too’s own artistic practice, while Hoo Fan Chon, Jerome Kugan, Jun Kit, and Liew Kwai Fei were his peers. All of these artists have a shared history with chi too. Many of them began their art careers making socially-engaged art, yet have since developed more “purely art” concerns or are presenting subtext-less works for the present exhibition; all the same, their works are united by a generous dose of humour. This sensibility—socially-conscious, yet also humorous and detached—perhaps also explains chi too’s taste in selecting his favourite emerging artists within this exhibition. Binti, CC Kua, Siti Gunong, and Syahnan Anuar all make works that have a whimsical and punk-ish humour. Dipali Gupta and Foo May Lyn are outliers, having both emerged in different contexts from the rest, but similar sensibilities in their works can still be found.

As with most of chi too’s endeavours, it is a show that will lead you to thinking in circles the more you think about what sort of point it’s trying to make, while at the same time realising that there may not be a point at all. With such thoughts in mind, we invite you to visit and delight in chi too’s “curated” selection of his favourite artists (who also happen to number among our gallery’s roster of artists) and to join us in tasteful mingling at the opening of this group show on December 9th, from 7pm onwards.

About the Producer

chi too is an art worker and artist. He is also a journalist, filmmaker, carpenter, and baker. His goal in life is to be a kitchen assistant where all he does is cut up ingredients and clean kitchens.

About the Artists

Binti is a poet, sister, daughter. Binti's works follow the frequencies of being by Binti for Binti, reclaiming the derogatory term often labelled to artists of being “Syok Sendiri” (“In one's own head”) as a benchmark to invite innovation.

With a tertiary education in cinema, Binti puts this forward through unrestricted channels that include poetry performances, film screenings, and art exhibitions. Past poetry performances include the JB Writers Readers festival (2017), Rantai Art (2019), performance artist for Lunadira and I-Sky’s 'Suara Kamar' (2020), and at CIMB Artober (2021, 2022). She has screened films through the Open Screen platform at Seashorts Film Festival in 2022. Her art has been included in group shows at CULT Gallery including Ways of Seeing (2022), Momento (2022), and Realpolitik (2023).

Besides individual approaches, Binti is also a part of the Malaysian collective duo, Mati, and the Creative Advisor of local multidisciplinary platform, Mulazine.

CC Kua (b. 1991, Kedah, Malaysia) is a visual artist, graphic designer, and lecturer based in Kuala Lumpur. She obtained a BA (Hons) in Graphic Design and Illustration from The One Academy (degree conferred by the University of Hertfordshire) before pursuing a Master of Fine Arts from the Graduate Institute of Plastic Arts at Tainan National University of the Arts, Taiwan. She works primarily in contemporary painting and drawing, finding inspiration in the simple joys of everyday life and dreams that dance through her head.

Her debut solo exhibition was Mosquito Bite in 2016, followed by Left A Bit, Right A Bit, Up A Bit, Down A Bit in 2019, both at Lostgens’ Contemporary Art Space, Kuala Lumpur. In 2020, she was selected for the Southeast Asian Arts Residency Programme at Rimbun Dahan, Malaysia. Shortly after, she had her third solo exhibition, featuring works produced during the residency, titled All By Myself at The Back Room, Kuala Lumpur (2020). Her works have also been selected for group exhibitions around Kuala Lumpur and Taipei.

Dipali Gupta (b. 1977, Mumbai, India) is a multidisciplinary artist based in Kuala Lumpur who explores society’s constructs and contradictions from the angle of the feminine. She received her BA in Fine Arts from Lasalle College of the Arts, Singapore, in 2018, winning the Chan Davies Art Prize for her series, Her Pleasure. Her concerns and research span Foucauldian biopolitics, Deleuzian societies of control, religious habits, socio-political dogmas, and psychosomatic effects. Her art attempts to interrogate normative prescriptions for behaviour and reclaim space by defying gendered myths and subverting notions of patriarchy, androcentricity, and binarism. Dipali’s research interests focus on feminist theory, post humanism, the body and identity politics and her multi-disciplinary practice appropriates from genres across Eastern and Western art canons.

Her works have been shown in cities around the world, including Kuala Lumpur, Singapore, Hong Kong, Helsinki, New Delhi, London, and Miami. In 2022, she was selected for inclusion in the inaugural ILHAM Art Show at ILHAM Gallery, Kuala Lumpur, and was a finalist in the Sovereign Asian Art Prize in Hong Kong. She has had smaller showcases of her work in Mutual Aid Projects (Uncertain Relaxation, 2020) and Suma Orientalis (2019), both in Kuala Lumpur. Her debut solo exhibition was Desire Lines at The Back Room, Kuala Lumpur, in 2022.

fml (Foo May Lyn) was a performer for over 20 years, but by unfortunate circumstance found herself making art instead. To sustain herself she was also a waitress, a cleaner and a shopgirl. She makes her art by expressing theatrical scripts or characters, tales, and injustices through varied materials that include paper, textiles, wood, and more. As she works, she often plays all the characters she creates in the process.

Her debut solo exhibition was 10,000 Mosquito Hearts, curated by Sharon Chin, at OUR ArtProjects, Kuala Lumpur, in 2019. Since then, she has been featured in the group shows Asynchronicity at Charim Schleifmühlgasse, Vienna, Austria, in 2022, and Fracture/Fiction: Selections from the ILHAM Collection at ILHAM Gallery, Kuala Lumpur, in 2019.

She lives still. In Penang.

The practice of visual artist Hoo Fan Chon (Malaysia, b. 1982) explores food consumption as a constant negotiation between nature and culture. His incisive and humorous works investigate value systems surrounding taste as social and cultural constructs. Growing up in Pulau Ketam, a fishing village off the coast of Klang, Hoo has an affinity with fish, which has become a recurring motif in his artwork. His most recent solo exhibition was The World is Your Restaurant at The Back Room, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia (2021); in 2023, he re-presented some works from this exhibition in the group show Table Manners, curated by Tan Siuli, at Appetite, Singapore. He was selected for the 3rd edition of the Makassar Biennale, and participated in the SEA-AiR Studio Residencies organised by NTU CCA Singapore and the European Union in Helsinki, Finland (2022) as well as Nusantara Archive’s No Man’s Land Residency, Taiwan (2017-2018). He was the co-founder of art collective Run Amok Gallery (2012-2017).

Jerome Kugan (b. 1975, Kota Kinabalu) is an artist based between Kuala Lumpur and Kota Kinabalu. Graduating with a BA in Writing from the University of Canberra in 1998, he has worked in various capacities as a writer, event organiser, musician, and queer activist in Kuala Lumpur.

In 2008, he co-organised Seksualiti Merdeka, a gender and sexuality rights festival in KL, until it was banned by the Malaysian government in 2011. In 2012, he founded Rainbow Rojak, a series of queer-inclusive themed parties in KL.

Although he has been exhibiting his artworks since 2005, it was only in 2016 that he began pursuing his art practice full-time, presenting his first solo Red & Gold at Raw Arts Space in Kuala Lumpur. In 2017, he moved back to his hometown of Kota Kinabalu, where he has continued to explore themes of queerness, spirituality and the self, in his mixed media paintings. In 2022, he staged his second solo show in two parts, HURT|NEED|UNDO|LIVE and RESIST, at The Back Room, Kuala Lumpur.

Jun Kit is a graphic designer and illustrator. He has contributed to a range of projects within the realms of art, publishing, theatre and activism, and has exhibited drawings and photographs in Kuala Lumpur, Singapore, and Tokyo.

Liew Kwai Fei (b. 1979, Kuantan, Pahang) is recognised today as among the most exciting new generation of contemporary painters in Malaysia. Spanning over a decade, his practice explores the hybridity of the painting medium and its capacity to communicate ideas spanning class, race, and language to the humbling experience of the unspeakable when we encounter art.

In recent years, his painting practice has been concerned with exploring the formal possibilities of both modern and contemporary painting. The idiosyncrasy and hybridity of his styles are also manifested in his playful creations of three-dimensional paintings and modular paintings.

Liew has had twelve solo exhibitions to date and has participated in numerous group exhibitions in Malaysia and Singapore. His work has been collected by institutions such as the National Art Gallery, Kuala Lumpur and the Singapore Art Museum.

Siti Gunong is a self-taught multidisciplinary artist who expresses herself across various mediums, including sewing, collage, printmaking, tattoos, drawing, and paintings. Her artworks reflect a special mix of thought-provoking insight and humour. The themes of her art are inspired by her personal experiences and the people and influences throughout her upbringing. She has exhibited her work in several group exhibitions, including 1000 Tiny Artworks at The Back Room, KL (2023); Wanita Merdeka at Rumah Api, KL (2023); Saturday High-Tea by Papu at Publika, KL (2022); and Instalasi & Intisari by Tandang Record Store at The Zhongshan Building (2019).

Syahnan Anuar is a visual artist hailing from Machang, Kelantan, but currently based in Kuala Lumpur, where he also runs the Bogus Merchandise silkscreen printing company. He works primarily in the medium of silkscreen across different surfaces. His works explore the personal and political tensions in his lived experience as a Malay-Muslim male living in 21st-century Malaysia.

His debut solo presentation was Potret Diri at The Back Room, Kuala Lumpur, in 2023. He has also participated in numerous group shows, including Realpolitik at CULT Gallery (2023), New Editions at Chetak17 (2023), Art is Fair at Fahrenheit 88 (2021), Wonderwall at The Back Room (2020), Awan & Tanah at CULT Gallery (2019), and Rethinking Editions at OUR ArtProjects (2019); all in Kuala Lumpur.

Wong Hoy Cheong was born in Penang, Malaysia, in 1960. He received a BA in literature from Brandeis University, Massachusetts, in 1982, and an M.Ed. from Harvard University in 1984. In 1986, he received an MFA in painting from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, and in 2011 was awarded the Rockefeller Foundation Bellagio Creative Fellowship. In an attempt to escape the solitude and stasis of painting, Wong now employs mediums that he considers collaborative, and which effectively mix historical depth with human immediacy; he works in drawing, photography, video, installation, and performance. During the 1990s, he developed an interest in the migration of plants. This inquiry led him to investigate human migration and the related subjects of race, colonization, and indigeneity.

Wong has been the subject of solo exhibitions at the National Art Gallery, Kuala Lumpur (1996 and 2004), and at other venues around the world including Kunsthalle, Vienna (2003); Pitt Rivers Museum, Oxford (2004); NUS Museum and Gallery, Singapore (2008); and Eslite Gallery, Taipei (2010). His work has also been included in group exhibitions internationally, including the Asia Pacific Triennial, Brisbane (1996); Art in Southeast Asia: Glimpses into the Future, Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo (1997); Fukuoka Asian Art Triennial, Japan (1999 and 2009); Venice Biennale (2003); Liverpool Biennial (2004); Guangzhou Triennial, China (2005); Asian Contemporary Art in Print, Asia Society, New York (2006); Naked Life, Museum of Contemporary Art, Taipei (2006); Istanbul Biennial (2007); Taipei Biennial (2008); Lyon Biennial, France (2009); Negotiating Home, History, and Nation at the Singapore Art Museum (2011); and PhotoEspana (2011). Wong lives and works in Penang, Malaysia.