EXHIBITIONS FROM 2026

“Hang Den” carries the intimacy of language in its title, a playful fusion of local slang meaning “you and me.” Hang is Penang dialect for “you,” while den is Negeri Sembilan dialect for “I.” The title gestures to Kide’s personal story, recalling his relationship with his wife, Ika, whom he first met in her hometown of Penang (on the northwest coast of Peninsular Malaysia), while he hails from Negeri Sembilan (in the central southern region of Peninsular Malaysia). Drawing from its autobiographical reference, the title situates the exhibition within memory, place, and human experience, tracing the ties between personal history and collective culture.

The works in this exhibition are born from a dialogue with Penang’s 1960s and 70s aesthetic, a period that Kide has long admired for its music, fashion, and visual sensibilities. He excavates this era through photographs, postcards, archival materials, and the lived experiences of the city today, listening closely to conversations in kopitiams, the gestures of neighbourhood shops, and the cadences of local streets. Through this practice, Kide reflects on how history, memory, and place shape contemporary experience.

Returning after the restrictions of 2020, “Hang Den” presents a long-awaited second chance to experience Kide’s work in its full breadth, after the previous exhibition was curtailed by the pandemic. The show reads as a love letter to Penang, with its communities, quirks, and enduring spirit, articulating the intimacy of everyday life as a form of historical consciousness. Kide’s paintings remain vivid, playful, and deeply human, recalling our own memories and opening up a renewed experience of the city through the attentive, imaginative gaze of one of Malaysia’s most compelling chroniclers of place and experience.

Danny Lim’s first solo exhibition in Malaysia, featuring a series of photographic works that trace his shift from the fast-paced global fashion circuit back to the quiet familiarity of home. The show offers a straightforward, two-way introduction between the photographer and the land he calls home.

The exhibition showcases a series of quiet portraits of Malaysian youth, cast by Tham Casting with Sara Kong producing the original photo shoot. Alongside the photography, the gallery features an on-site text installation written by Kelly Lim. Departing from his usual high-fashion models, these frames capture the subjects in their simplest form, creating an intimate space where people can just be themselves.

C.R.E.A.M.S. and Friends is a collective exploration of value and the weight money holds in one’s pockets. Through a series of installations and collaborative works, this exhibition expands the traditional concept of cash and explores the shifting nature of currency in an evolving society.

The common contradictions of the modern economy—where wealth can be both hyper-visible and entirely abstract—urge us to question the role money plays within our lives. With works providing a tongue-in-cheek economic critique of a form of social power, the exhibition taps into humanity’s invisible ties that bind our identity to our net worth.

𝗧𝗿𝗮𝗰𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗦𝗶𝗹𝗲𝗻𝗰𝗲 is a research exhibition and a transitional presentation of an ongoing, long-term fieldwork study on contemporary Okinawa by Penang-based performance maker and independent researcher NGO Tjer Hong, in collaboration with Ryo Kobayashi.

As a West Malaysian familiar with Penang, yet a complete outsider to the archipelago far south of mainland Japan and north of Taiwan, NGO experimented with bypassing grand state monuments and tourist traps. Guided by Walter Benjamin’s concept of the flâneur, he traveled strictly on foot or by bicycle to uncover the hidden fractures embedded within Okinawa’s most unremarkable, everyday objects. Armed only with pencil and paper, he used frottage (rubbing) to manually trace the unvoiced structural friction beneath these surfaces.