Artist Talk: Marcos Kueh - Love, Labour, and Cultural Repair

Join us for an evening conversation on the occasion of Marcos Kueh’s first institutional solo exhibition, 'Smooth Sailing, 一路順風', at esea contemporary. Taking its title from a Chinese parting blessing, the exhibition reflects on journeys, memory, and the afterlives of migration — tracing how textiles hold both the weight of exploitation and the promise of solidarity.

The artist Marcos Kueh will be in conversation with Amy George, Senior Curator of Collections, Textiles & Wallpaper at the Whitworth, University of Manchester, and Dr Vera Mey, Asia Triennial Manchester 6 Curatorial Research Fellow at Manchester School of Art. Moderated by Jo-Lene Ong, curator at esea contemporary, the discussion will take us through Kueh’s process in developing this major new work — from researching collections at The Whitworth and the People’s History Museum during his residency at esea contemporary, to expanding his practice into sculptural and kinetic forms. Together, the conversation will reflect on how his evolving practice meditates on endurance, abandonment, and fragile hope, suggesting diaspora as an act of cultural repair and imagination.

Anchoring these ideas is Kueh’s new installation, a sculptural tableau of persistence and loss: a fractured sail and mast recalling migration and rupture, an embroidery machine labouring endlessly in solitude, and fabric remnants bearing well-wishing talismans and faded emblems of work. Through this poetic assemblage, 'Smooth Sailing, 一路順風' contemplates how acts of making might hold space for both exploitation and solidarity — for what has been broken, and what might still be repaired.

About Marcos Kueh

Marcos Kueh is an artist from Sarawak, Borneo Malaysia, currently living and working in the Netherlands. His practice centres on textiles as a medium for storytelling, drawing from Borneo’s ancestral weaving traditions to explore themes of identity, labour, and globalisation.

Growing up in a post-colonial developing country, Kueh has long been engaged with questions of identity and how Malaysia is perceived – whether through colonial depictions in museums or stylised narratives in tourism advertising. His work seeks to reconcile these representations with his lived experience growing up in Borneo, navigating the pressures of modernity and globalisation. He uses weaving to encode contemporary legends from everyday life, just as the ancestors of Borneo did with their dreams and stories before the arrival of written alphabets from the West.

Kueh holds a Bachelor’s in Graphic and Textile Design from the Royal Academy of Art, The Hague, completed in 2022. That same year, he was awarded the Ron Mandos Young Blood Award, and in 2023 he was named Young Designer of the Year by the Dutch Design Awards. His works are held in the collections of Museum Voorlinden and the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam. Recent exhibitions include Manifesta 15 in Barcelona; Kunstinstituut Melly in Rotterdam; The Backroom, Kuala Lumpur; and the National Art Gallery Malaysia in Kuala Lumpur.

About Amy George

Amy George is Senior Curator of Collections, Textiles & Wallpaper at the Whitworth, University of Manchester. Her curatorial expertise pans ancient Andean textiles, textiles from South Asia, mid-century wallpaper, and contemporary practice. She has curated exhibitions,published research, and presented internationally, and recently led the acquisition of the ABC Wax archive—the UK’s largest surviving complete textile design archive. Amy’s practice combines art and design history with social narratives, using material culture and textile archives to engage diverse audiences and reframe museum collections for the present.

About Dr Vera May

Dr Vera Mey is an art historian and independent curator. She was awarded her PhD from SOAS, University of London. Most recently, she was Co-Artistic Director of the Busan Biennale 2024. Mey co-founded the scholarly journal ‘Southeast of Now: Directions in Contemporary and Modern Art in Asia’ (National University of Singapore Press) and was part of the research colloquium ‘The Color Curtain and the Promise of Bandung’ organised by the Hochschule für Bildende Künste–Städelschule, Frankfurt, and the UC Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive, California. She was on the founding curatorial team of the NTU Centre for Contemporary Art Singapore, where she led the Residencies Programme. More recently, as an independent curator, she has co-curated and curated exhibitions in Bangkok, Berlin, New Zealand, Paris, Phnom Penh, Shanghai, Singapore, and Tokyo.

Image credit:

1. From left to right: Amy George (Photo courtesy of Amy George), Marcos Kueh (Photographed by Koos Breukel), and Dr Vera Mey (Photographed by Steve Lawton).

About esea contemporary

esea contemporary is the UK’s only non-profit art centre specialising in presenting and platforming artists and art practices that identify with and are informed by East and Southeast Asian (ESEA) cultural backgrounds.

esea contemporary is situated in an award-winning building in the heart of Manchester, home to one of the largest East Asian populations in the UK. Since its inauguration as a community-oriented visual arts festival in 1986, esea contemporary – previously named Centre for Chinese Contemporary Art – has continuously evolved to establish itself as a dynamic and engaging space for cross-cultural exchanges in the British art scene, as well as in a global context.

esea contemporary aims to increase the visibility of contemporary art practices from the East and Southeast Asian communities and their diasporas. It is a site for forward-thinking art programmes that beyond exhibitions also include commissions, research, residencies, publishing, and a wide range of vibrant public events. esea contemporary values creativity, compassion, interconnectedness, and collectivity in implementing its mission.

Photo by Joe Smith.

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