Playing Democracy 2.0 has recently won the Finalist award for Asia Digital Art Award Fukuoka! Many thanks to the organisations who have supported the project over the years! – Barbican, Now Play This, STRP Festival and Lumen Arts.
– Dec 2024
On Nov 15, a Low Carbon Chinatown Supper Club was hosted at the historical Leeds Kirkgate Market where 60 guests gathered to enjoy a communal feast featuring a series of delicious low carbon Chinese dishes developed in collaboration with data scientists, food writers and East & Southeast Asian communities across London & Leeds. The Supper Club setting was assembled out of the Low Carbon Pop-up, made up of recycled cardboard & low carbon materials.
Find out more via the project website.
– Nov 2024
Hosted in Leeds Kirkgate Market (one of Europe’s largest indoor markets) over two-weeks period, the Leeds Low Carbon Pop-Up is an experimental food farm and data showcase, nurturing and stocking food ingredients (locally, regionally grown and globally sourced) that was later used to prepare a large-scale Leeds Low Carbon Supper Club for 60 people hosted at Kirkgate Market on 15 November 2024. The Pop-Up was featured as part of Compass Festival 2024.
Find out more via the project website.
– Nov 2024
In collaboration with Barking Riverside, HAQUE TAN will be transforming the Control Centre of the former Barking power station in East London to create an immersive interactive experience on 12th Oct.
Our new project Strata is an interactive architectural intervention that peels back layers of the building, exposing its history and people’s relationship to the area. The work creates an immersive ‘incision’ into the unoccupied infrastructure, enabling visitors to experience the site and its surrounding area at different macro and micro scales, zooming through diverse perspectives across space and time, blending digital and physical experience with the past, present and future.
– Oct 2024
Low Carbon Chinatown is exhibiting at Ars Electronica 2024 as part of the S+T+ARTS Exhibition where the project was nominated for the S+T+ARTS Prize. I will also be hosting a Low Carbon Food System workshop at the festival on 5th Sept, sign up if you are around!
– Sept 2024
Low Carbon Chinatown is going to Leeds this November as part of Compass Festival 2024!
A special Pop-Up will be installed inside the historical Leeds Kirkgate Market over two weeks starting 1st Nov this year. Set up as a food farm + data science store, the installation will house various locally grown ‘living’ ingredients that will be nurtured, and later harvested to cook a series of delicious low carbon Chinese dishes co-developed by acclaimed food writers/chefs and East & Southeast Asian communities, at a one-time Supper Club inside the market on 15th November evening. Stay tuned for more information!
– July 2024
Low Carbon Chinatown has won a nomination prize for S+T+ARTS Prize 2024!
S+T+ARTS is an initiative of the European Commission, the annual prize single out for recognition innovative projects at the nexus of science, technology and the arts that have what it takes to make a significant impact on economic and social innovation.
The project will be exhibited at Ars Electronica 2024 in September, including a workshop I will be hosting at the festival.
– July 2024
Delighted to announce that I am a Design Council Expert!
Dedicated to a planet-positive and regenerative future, as part of a network of over 220 practitioners working across design, digital, fashion arts, craft, policy, service, systems and the natural and built environment, we will be working on impactful projects, shaping policy, and advocating for change to demonstrate the power of design in achieving net zero over the next three years.
– June 2024
Announcing the launch of HAQUE TAN! A new design studio I setup together with long-time collaborator Usman Haque. The studio will focus on developing work that combine the scale of architecture with the ingenuity of art and the eccentricities of technology. We want to radically transform the built environment, making spaces more democratic, inclusive and culturally driven. Watch this space!
– April 2024
I’ll be presenting my latest work Playing Democracy 2.0 as an ACT award winner by STRP Festival in Eindhoven, this year’s theme explores “A Matter of Freedom”.
This is a more complex version of my earlier work based on a multiplayer game of Pong, with more players interaction and principles of democracy explored. With sound design by uah, where different national anthem is played depending on the game’s ‘democratic’ state, drawn from the International Institute for Democracy & Electoral Assistance’s Global State of Democracy Report 2023.
– April 2024
Please to announce that Low Carbon Chinatown was awarded a finalist award at Seoul Design Award 2023 – an award given to designers or organizations whose projects have contributed to a sustainable daily life that aims for a harmonious relationship between people, society and the environment.
– Dec 2023
Over the past few months, Usman Haque and I have been co-hosting a creative residency programme in Karachi, working with local artists, architects and designers to explore the relationship between humans and non-humans in Pakistan and beyond.
The artistic research residency is a collaboration between the Institute of Business Management and Umbrellium supported by the British Council.
– Nov 2023
Delighted to share that I have been selected by S+T+ARTS Hungry Ecocities to work on a new project Low Carbon Climate Cookbook.
I will continue my exploration of ways to introduce low carbon cooking + food into our food system through working with data and plant scientists, and will be experimenting using AI as a tool and framework to explore its contribution to the notion of authenticity in food.
– Sept 2023
Extremely delighted to be awarded the 2024 STRP Award of Creative Technology (ACT Award)! I’ll be working on a new and larger version of Playing Democracy exploring the principles of democracy in this day and age.
With the award, STRP wants to stimulate the development and production of new artworks and provide the opportunity to premier them during STRP Festival 2024: 𝘈 𝘔𝘢𝘵𝘵𝘦𝘳 𝘰𝘧 𝘍𝘳𝘦𝘦𝘥𝘰𝘮.
– May 2023
In April 2023, I collaborated with architect and artist, Usman Haque, to run a two-day interaction design workshop with 75 design students at Ngee Ann Polytechnic in Singapore, exploring algorithms, latency, feedback, 2nd order cybernetics, reaction vs interaction and many more concepts using their bodies, voices and phone torchlights. Watch a short summary video here.
– April 2023
I curated my first exhibition, titled State-less 無國界, as part of Associate Artistic Director role in Kakilang. The exhibition features multimedia works of 10 internationally acclaimed Southeast and East Asian artists. The exhibition is held at Two Temple Place in London from 11th March to 9th April 2023.
– 22 Mar 2023
I’ll be doing a residency with Compass Festival this year. Learning from Low Carbon Chinatown, I will continue to explore themes surrounding food and climate, and work with a group of Leeds’ East and Southeast asian community members to develop a new low carbon recipe.
– 27 Feb 2023
Digital SUPERPOWER! was exhibited at Matsudo International Science Art Festival in Matsudo City in Japan as part of Ars Electronica 2022 Feature. As part of the feature, a data experiment was carried out with a group of residents in Matsudo, who used the Digital SUPERPOWER! digital toolkit to map out different safe spaces in Matsudo in times of natural disaster.
– 25 Oct 2022
Low Carbon Chinatown premiered at London Chinatown, where 300 members of the public gathered across several days in a custom built low carbon pop-up pavilion to enjoy a series of sit down meals consisting of low carbon Chinese dishes developed by 60 East & Southeast Asian participants, a data scientist and notable ESEA food writers and chefs.
– 20 Sept 2022
Building from the 6-months long Taking Root pilot project that took place in Birmingham, the project is now “taking root” across other parts of the UK! This time round, we are working with a new community of more than 40 participants (Bamboo Parents) from across Liverpool City Region, Stoke-on-Trent and Newcastle-under-Lyme. Stay tuned!
– 19 May 2022
This April, we’ve successfully concluded our final Planting Ceremony as part of Taking Root – a 6 months long collaborative growing pilot project I’ve been working on that explores the relationship that people living in the UK have with non-native bamboo plants as a sustainable material, as a carbon sink, and its role and ours in tackling the climate crisis.
– 22 April 2022
It’s a wrap! Playing Democracy was exhibited last weekend at Somerset House as part of Now Play This Festival. Super interesting to observe the play dynamics between different players and how the presence of surrounding audiences affect the players’ behaviour – their sense of competitiveness, fair play and wanting to be ‘nice’ to each other.
– 11 April 2022
Happy to share that my interactive work – Playing Democracy is awarded Finalists’ Award for Asia Digital Art Award Fukuoka (ADAA) Interactive Arts Category. It is also shortlisted for Zebrastraat New Technological Art Award (NTAA) and will be exhibiting at Zebrastraat Art Centre in Ghent, Belgium next month.
– 11 Jan 2022
Excited to be taking on a new role as an associate artistic director at Chinese Arts Now, together with choreographer and theatre-maker Si Rawlinson, writer, performer and filmmaker Daniel York Loh, and CAN’s artistic director An-Ting Chang.
Working with CAN, I look forward to presenting ways that art can activate the local Chinese community (including East and South East Asian) to make sense of, and affect the environment through individual and collective actions.
– 22 Nov 2021
I will be trailing SUPERMOMENTS at this year’s Random String Festival in Coventry!
We have been working with young performers from Highly Sprung who will be embodying and performing the audio stories recorded by local residents in Coventry that capture their relationship with the city. The performance is on the 13th November at the canal basin at 6 pm, 7 pm and 8 pm.
– 9 Nov 2021
Excited to be carrying on the partnership with Lumen Art Projects on a brand new commission by Barking Riverside. The project, Growing Riversiders, is a participatory project involving 100 local residents collaboratively growing a large-scale plant-based pixel artwork that represents their collective identity for Barking Riverside, created by the community themselves using digital tools and through growing plants in their own homes.
In the summer, participants will piece together their plant boxes to reveal the final artwork. The public launch of the physical artwork will take place at the Wilds Ecology Centre, in the new Northgate area of Barking Riverside.
– 25 Feb 2021
This spring, I will be working with CAN and Season for Change on a new pilot project – Chinatown Climate Exploration.
Through a series of digital workshops and activities, a small group of Chinatown community members will actively record their perception surrounding different topics relating to their travel, food culture and relationship with peers using a custom mobile web platform. They will discuss and make sense of the data collected as individual and collective, and co-design a rating scale that maps their various actions/approaches in their everyday life to the level of impact they think it has on the climate.
– 25 Feb 2021
Pleased to announce that SUPERPOWER! has been awarded British Council Digital Collaboration Fund! I will be continuing the collaboration with Fak’ugesi Festival and new partner Youth for Innovation Trust on a new digital version of the project titled Digital SUPERPOWER!.
The project involves working remotely with young womxn (women including transgender women) creatives and their peers from London, Johannesburg and Bulawayo to make sense of issues surrounding safety and security in their environment through their subjective perception using digital tools
– 10 Jan 2021
I am pleased to announce that SUPERMOMENTS has been selected for the Without Walls Blueprint 2020 Programme alongside 9 other UK artists and companies.
SUPERMOMENTS is a new interactive outdoor procession that combines wearable technology and geolocated audio storytelling to explore our personal agency, empathy and collective actions towards changing our city. It is about heightening the experience of those special moments people have in cities – and sharing them with each other while reflecting on your own urban experiences and hopes for the future. More information, visit here
– 4 July 2020
Excited to be working with Cluj Cultural Centre on a residency project – SUPERPOWER!, a participatory project that enables people to make sense of their complex interaction with the city, explores collective empathy and the impact of the built environment on their health & well-being through their innate subjective perception. More information, visit here
– 1 June 2020
I have launched a new interactive work at Barbican! Titled Playing Democracy, it is a giant two-player game of Pong, exploring the principles of democracy. Structured as a competitive game of Pong, the audience controls the game paddles using their body movement tracked by a camera.
The project is commissioned by Lumen Art Projects and Barbican.
– 17 March 2020
SUPERGESTURES is exhibiting at House of Electronic Arts Basel (HeK) in Basel this year as part of their Making FASHION Sense exhibition.
The exhibition focuses on the impact of technology upon creative processes in the fashion industry, as well as on artistic paths leading towards increasing sustainability: Fashion which makes sense.
– 16 January 2020
Pollution Explorers is showing at The Art Pavilion in London this month as part of the Depictions of Living exhibition.
The exhibition features 77 selected emerging artists exploring issues surrounding climate breakdown exhibited alongside artefacts and photos from protest movements, connecting the art world and environmental movements, enmeshing art and activism in a contemporary gallery space.
– 23 Jan 2020
