Ho Tzu Nyen: P for Power

Bozar presents the first exhibition in Belgium of the Singaporean artist Ho Tzu Nyen. 

The internationally renowned artist explores big questions in his ambitious artworks that bring together deep research, popular visual culture, and new technology. From documentary research to fantasy, his work combines archival images, animation and film in installations that are often immersive and theatrical. 

For Bozar, Ho Tzu Nyen is creating a new work titled P for Power, which builds upon his earlier work The Critical Dictionnary of Southeast Asia. At a moment in which the notion of power is being challenged and reconsidered, not least in the light of worldwide challenges to democracy but also in relation to developments in AI, his work dares to face pressing political and philosophical issues head-on.  

Two other large-scale installations are presented at Bozar and map out the artist’s vision:

T for Time (2023) is a one-hour real-time video installation in which Ho examines time as both a working material and an elusive concept. Across two overlapping screens, algorithmically altered found footage and hand-drawn animated after-images unfold in chapters that move from global clock standardisation to intimate family stories, accompanied by a continuous solo saxophone. Rather than providing answers, the work opens a series of questions about Time as a lens for understanding Southeast Asia’s cultural differences. 

“Sometimes I think that the true medium I work with is time itself. After all, one could say that moving images like films and videos are just attempts to give shape to time.” —Ho Tzu Nyen

Time Pieces extends this reflection through an installation of 43 screens of varying sizes and durations. Bringing together videos, animations, apps, and digital models, the installation explores multiple ways of measuring and imagining time, from fleeting one-second loops to 24-hour cycles, forming a deliberately unruly celebration of Time’s heterogeneity. 

“Together, the three works invite viewers into Ho Tzu Nyen’s favourite terrain, a space where ideas connect, multiply, collide, and keep changing,” says Emma Dumartheray, Curatorial Project Coordinator.

Mapping southeast Asia’s plural identities
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. 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.  

A formative bond with Brussels  
Brussels holds a deeply personal place in Ho Tzu Nyen’s life and artistic practice, marked by formative encounters. He first came to the city at the invitation of Christophe Slagmuylder and the late Frie Leysen to present one of his earliest projects at Kunstenfestivaldesarts in 2006 [with his first film Utama – Every Name in History is I]. Brussels is also inseparable from Ho’s childhood imagination, as the home of Tintin and Snowy, figures that embody curiosity, questioning, and the joy of discovery. 

About the artist
Multidisciplinary artist Ho Tzu Nyen was born in 1976 in Singapore, where he lives and works. He has been appointed Artistic Director of the 16th Gwangju Biennale in 2026. Ho Tzu Nyen is the winner of the CHANEL Next Prize 2024, and the Art Basel Awards 2025 as "Established Artist". He was also ranked on 5th position in the Art Review Power 100, the annual ranking of the most influential people in art.