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 mise-en-scenes, constructed in states of resolution and dissolution between imagined futures, alternative presents, and fictional mechanisms.
Currently studying for a PhD at the Royal College of Art, in London, she explores 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 is conducting her research through field trips to Mauritius, and conversations and collaborations with environmentalists, historians, archivists, philosophers and scientists.
A selection of her recent exhibition includes: 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.
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.
