Ho Rui An is a Singaporean artist whose practice spans contemporary art, cinema, performance and theory. Known for his intellectually rigorous and historically informed approach to artistic research, Ho situates his inquiry at the intersections of political economy, history, and media studies, often casting an eye towards the inherently political relationship between labour, technology and capital while reimagining art as a space for making arguments that interrogate prevailing historical narratives and systems of power. His projects serve as critical platforms to question, in particular, technologically deterministic narratives that overlook the complex historical forces that give form to technology as we know it.

Central to Ho’s practice is his essayistic approach to research and artmaking, whether it be through lectures, films or exhibitions..This approach involves weaving historical research, theoretical inquiry, and visual storytelling, creating spaces for critical reflection on the construction of history itself. His work frequently addresses themes such as globalisation, capital, and state power, focusing on the ways images are produced, circulated and consumed. By doing so, he challenges the audience to critically reflect on the mechanisms of control and networks of influence that govern their lives.

Also key to Ho’s artistic process is his engagement with cinema, which often serves as a recurring point of reference in his research into historical archives and contemporary culture.  For him, every film, be it narrative or documentary, is not just a vehicle for meaning but also a document of its time. He is particularly drawn to the at once contingent and durational form of the moving image, which he approaches as a basis for  tracing connections between the past and the present and between different geopolitical contexts By approaching cinema as an apparatus of representation embedded within systems of power, he also seeks to understand how social structures are depicted on screen and how such representations in turn come to reshape social reality 

An extension of Ho’s engagement with cinema is his broader investigation of technology. For the artist,  technology is never simply a tool for artistic production but also always a subject of inquiry. He pushes back against arguments on the supposed neutrality of technology by considering the ways in which it is deeply embedded within social and political dynamics. His exploration of generative AI, for instance, traces its historical roots to systems of control and domination first developed during the Cold War, such as experiments in data extraction and feedback loops that were devised as part of counterinsurgency operations in Southeast Asia. By uncovering these histories, Ho reveals how technology both shapes and is shaped by its supposed users, raising questions about how we use technology and how it, in turn, uses us.

Despite the challenges of navigating complex infrastructures and institutional dynamics, Ho remains committed to working within an internationalist framework in order to understand the ways that local struggles are often deeply intertwined through networks of global capital. Given the extent to which global networks today run upon technologies and infrastructures whose control is increasingly concentrated in a handful of multinational corporations, it has also become clear to the artist that indispensable to any contemporary critique of power is a careful re-examination of the tools, platforms and systems that by way of circumscribing the very ways we relate to one another foreclose our ability to collectively imagine an alternative political order.

Figures of History and the Grounds of Intelligence (2024)
AI-generated images, wallpaper and sand, 75’
Courtesy of A+ Works of Art, Kuala Lumpur
Photo: Quinn Lum

24 Cinematic Points of View of a Factory Gate in China (2023)
4K video, 24′ 45″
Courtesy of the artist

Ho Rui An is an artist and writer working in the intersections of contemporary art, cinema, performance and theory. Through lectures, essays and films, his research examines the relations between labour, technology and capital across different systems of governance in a global age. He has presented projects at the Shanghai Biennale, Bangkok Art Biennale, Gwangju Biennale, Jakarta Biennale, Kochi-Muziris Biennale, Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin, Kunsthalle Wien, Singapore Art Museum, Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven, and Yamaguchi Center for Arts and Media, Japan.