Ho Tzu Nyen: Night Charades

Co-commissioned by M+ and Art Basel, and presented by UBS, Night Charades is an AI-generated animation that pays tribute to the history of Hong Kong cinema. Against the night lights of Victoria Harbour, the new facade commission features an assembly of AI-generated characters performing a series of mimes that recall iconic scenes and gestures from the Golden Age of Hong Kong cinema. The charades players re-enact roles performed by the likes of Leslie Cheung, Maggie Cheung, Stephen Chow, Chow Yun-fat, Brigitte Lin, and Anita Mui. The scenes are drawn from the chivalric choreography of John Woo films and the hyper-aestheticized romanticism of Wong Kar Wai to the boundless imagination of Tsui Hark and the fearless face of Wong Jing, among others.

These futuristic looking charade players of different generations—some human, some non-human—are presented in the high contrast, theatrical lighting styles of Baroque paintings and high gloss advertising. Who are they? Where did they come from? Where are they going? The ambiguity is further intensified by the charade players’ uniform of luminous stripes, extravagant pleats, and sculptural folds that flutter in the slowed down, surreal atmosphere. Constantly reshuffled by an algorithm as a way of creating ever-changing combinations of characters and scenes, the work presents a pertinent, non-linear re-interpretation of the city’s cinematic past, highlighting its porosity, fluidity, and potential to spark new creative interpretations.

Night Charades will be shown on the M+ Facade every night from March 22, 2025 for three months. This marks the fourth year M+ has collaborated with Art Basel, supported by UBS, to activate the M+ Facade.

In conjunction with Night Charades, the film programme Ho Tzu Nyen: Investigating Histories will be shown at the Grand Stair from March to June 2025.

About Ho Tzu Nyen
Steeped in numerous Eastern and Western cultural references ranging from art history to theatre and from cinema to music to philosophy, Ho Tzu Nyen’s works blend mythical narratives and historical facts to mobilise different understandings of history, its writing and its transmission. The central theme of his œuvre is a long-term investigation of the plurality of cultural identities in Southeast Asia, a region so multifaceted in terms of its languages, religions, cultures, and influences that it is impossible to reduce it to a simple geographical area or some fundamental historical base. This observation as to the history of this region of the world is reflected in his pieces which weave together different regimes of knowledge, narratives, and representations. From documentary research to fantasy, his work combines archival images, animation, and film in installations that are often immersive and theatrical.

Solo exhibitions of his work have been held at the Hessel Museum of Art (2024), Art Sonje Center (2024), Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo (2024), Singapore Art Museum (2023), Hammer Museum (2022), Toyota Municipal Museum of Art (2021), Crow Museum of Asian Arts (2021), Yamaguchi Center for Arts and Media (YCAM) (2021), Edith-Russ-Haus for Media Art (Oldenburg, 2019), Kunstverein in Hamburg (2018), Ming Contemporary Art Museum (McaM) (Shanghai, 2018), Asia Art Archive (2017), Guggenheim Bilbao (2015), Mori Art Museum, (2012), The Substation (Singapore, 2003). He represented the Singapore Pavilion at the 54th Venice Biennale (2011).

About M+ 
M+ is Asia’s first global museum of contemporary visual culture. The museum showcases a pre-eminent collection of 20th- and 21st-century visual culture within an Asian context, encompassing the disciplines of design and architecture, moving image, and visual art from Hong Kong, Greater China, Asia, and beyond.