Kenneth Wong

Curator, Heritage Specialist, Placemaker

Malaysia

Kenneth Wong considered himself as an urban nomad who has lived in Malaysia, Singapore, Hong Kong, France, Italy, and German for his quest of knowledge and understanding of local cultures. As an independent curator and member of ICOM Malaysia, his recent curatorial proposal has been selected by Waley Art Taipei as one of the five winners out of 57 submissions in July 2020. The very same proposal has also been awarded the grant by the Department of Cultural Affairs, Taipei City Government in January 2021. He has also published a paper titled “Negotiating the Realization of Asian Queer Art” in the 2020 Annual Conference and Seminar Proceedings of Taiwan Art History Association. Founded People Ideas Culture 人思文 in early 2016, his dedication has focused on placemaking, heritage tourism, art curatorial, and cultural programming. IFACCA chose him to serve as rapporteur for the 8th World Summit of Art and Culture (Kuala Lumpur, 2019). As a beneficiary under the CENDANA Mobility Grant, he has represented two emerging artists to participate in the 6th LICA (Lisbon International Contemporary Art) in Portugal in 2018. He has executed various art exhibitions in collaboration with different spaces in Kuala Lumpur throughout 2016-2019, which very much skewed towards social-oriented art projects. As a speaker, he sat in one of the panelist discussions on “River Cities” during the 7th Macau Literary Festival (2018) and have presented in “Bandung Creative Movement Conference (2017, Indonesia) and International Landscape Architects Dialogue (2017, Kuala Lumpur). He has run a day of International Industrial Heritage Marketing Workshop in Ipoh, as a satellite event of Pangkor International Development Dialogue (2017) in Malaysia, as a member of ICTC (International Cultural Tourism Committee) and ICOMOS (International Council of Monuments and Sites). He is an academic recipient of the Asian Development Bank-Japan scholarship (2006-2008) and the Erasmus Mundus scholarship (2010-2012).