Articles by Kwok Kian Chow

Yokohama Triennale, Lu Xun’s ‘Wild Grass’ and our lives

Strolling through the 8th Yokohama Triennale held mainly at the Yokohama Museum of Art, former director of the Singapore Art Museum Kwok Kian Chow reflects on the historical woodcut connections between Japan and China and in the wider Asian region.

Kwok Kian Chow

Chinese artist Zeng Fanzhi: Constructing a visual language all his own

Former director of the Singapore Art Museum Kwok Kian Chow shares his thoughts on reencountering the works of Chinese artist Zeng Fanzhi at the Museum of Art Pudong, Shanghai.

Kwok Kian Chow

Singapore's Xiu Hai Lou Collection and what it tells us about late 19th-20th century Chinese art

Private collector Yeo Khee Lim (1917-1998) amassed one of the earliest and most comprehensive collections of late 19th-20th century Chinese art since he started collecting them in the 1940s and 50s. The stories in the collection - of literati painters, the Shanghai School, the Lingnan School, the Teochews and the Nanyang painters who passed through and lived on our shores - have been told before in exhibitions put up by Yeo himself and later by the National Gallery and others. But in a recent NTU conference on the life of Yeo Khee Lim, the importance of the prized collection comes back to the fore.

Kwok Kian Chow

Growing up (and old) with Chinese philosopher Li Zehou

Think of how the switching between languages, cultures and epistemologies can itself be an integral part of reading and writing, and extend this to a thinker's broadest philosophical opus, in concepts, articulations and communications - that is the work of Chinese philosophy great Li Zehou (1930-2021), says former Singapore Art Museum director, Kwok Kian Chow.

Kwok Kian Chow