Minstrel Kuik (MY)
Image: Minstrel Kuik, Mimic la Chinoise 2005-19. Courtesy the artist and Richard Koh Fine Art, Kuala Lumpur.
Chinese Malaysian artist Minstrel Kuik (b. 1976, Malaysia) left her fishing village hometown Pantai Remis at 18 years old. After earning a Bachelor of Fine Art degree majoring in painting in Taipei, Taiwan, she obtained her master’s degree in photography in Arles, France in 2006. With her multilingual education, the access to different cultures has come amid the first awareness about the politics of place, gender and identity, to which her migratory body has to constantly conform and adapt. Minstrel has exhibited at FotoFest, Houston; Photoquai, Musée du quai Branly, Paris; Higashikawa Photo Festival, Higashikawa, Japan; and at the Lishui Biennial Photography Festival in China. In 2017 she was part of the group show Our Studio Selves at Artspace Ideas Platform in Sydney, following by another solo exhibition Old Wave Brings Empty Shells at Cross Art Projects in Sydney in 2018.