Ho Tzu Nyen

As a crossover artist, Ho Tzu Nyen often works across a broad range of mediums including film, theatre, installation art, sound, and writing. No matter in what identity or with what medium, Ho always reflects around several aspects: the research on Southeast Asia’s regional politics and folk history, mythology and culture; the study of cinematic language, structure and symbols; and various visual experiments and metaphors in relation to social realities or inner illusions. Waiting is a special project from this epidemic, in which Ho collaborated with Ripon Chowdhury, a Singaporean expatriate worker from Bangladesh, and invited him to record a session of his lengthy quarantine on camera. Ripon Chowdhury is one of some 323,000 migrant workers living in dormitories amongst the city state of Singapore, where the overwhelming majority of Singapore’s more than 30,000 COVID-19 infection cases take place. Since 21 April 2020, the government has imposed strict lockdown measures upon all dormitories, and the migrant workers-mostly hailing from South Asia or China-have been largely confined to their rooms. It is in this context that Ripon Chowdhury was invited by artist Ho Tzu Nyen to contribute to Contactless Deliveries. A poet, writer, and activist from Chittagong, Bangladesh, Chowdhury has been based in Singapore since 2010 as a migrant worker.