KENT CHAN

Early Years and Background

Kent Chan grew up in Singapore, where he developed an early interest in film and visual media. He completed his BA (Hons) in Film at LASALLE College of Arts in Singapore before moving to the Netherlands to pursue further study. Chan obtained his MFA from the Sandberg Institute in Amsterdam in 2015, marking a pivotal moment in his artistic development. Based between Amsterdam and Singapore, Chan’s practice draws on his bicultural positioning to explore contested legacies of modernity and alternative ways of imagining the tropics beyond colonial frameworks.

Kent Chan’s Artistic Practice

Kent Chan creates multi-media works that examine climate change through speculative futures and embodied experience. His films, performances and installations work with moving-image, sound and spatial installation to conjure alternative world-building rooted in tropical imaginaries. Through these works, Chan addresses the escalating climate crisis, environmental displacement, and technological interventions in natural systems—themes he approaches with rigorous attention to the sensory and affective dimensions of living through planetary change.

Early Works and Evolution

Chan’s artistic trajectory has consistently centred on the relationship between heat, art and culture. His early practice established the artist’s commitment to interweaving art, fiction and cinema as porous, interconnected registers of meaning-making. Works emerging from his time at the Sandberg Institute developed this interest, establishing themes around the tropical and its contested place within art history and contemporary cultural production.

The Tropical Imaginary and Climate

Over recent years, Chan’s practice has become increasingly preoccupied with climate crisis as a structuring condition for artistic and cultural thought. Rather than treating climate change as an external backdrop, Chan positions speculative climate futures as the generative starting point for his work. This approach inverts colonial imaginaries of the tropics to instead centre lived realities, embodied experience and alternative temporal relationships to planetary change. His works engage questions of geoengineering, environmental migration and technological mastery over natural systems, addressing the hubris of human intervention in Earth’s climate systems.

Film, Performance and Installation

Chan works across moving-image, performance and print-based media. His films often draw from popular culture, media and electronic music, approaching futurism as a mode of cultural critique. Recent performances have involved collaboration with sound artists to fuse storytelling, music and moving image into audiovisual acts. His installations frequently intervene directly in gallery spaces—notably allowing environmental conditions such as heat and humidity to become material components of the exhibition itself, implicating visitors in the artwork’s thematic concerns through embodied sensory experience.

Kent Chan’s Major Exhibitions

Select Solo Exhibitions

• Three Acts of the Sun, The Hall, NTU Centre for Contemporary Art Singapore, Singapore, 2026
• Future Tropics, Gasworks, London, United Kingdom, 2023
• No Title Yet, Kunstinstituut Melly, Rotterdam, Netherlands, 2021
• Film Programme, de Appel, Amsterdam, Netherlands, 2021
• Seni, Bonnefanten Museum, Maastricht, Netherlands, 2020
• Sonic Medi(t)ations, National University Singapore Museum, Singapore, 2019

Select Group Exhibitions

• Liverpool Biennial, United Kingdom, 2023
• 12th Seoul Mediacity Biennale, Seoul Museum of Art (SeMA), South Korea, 2023
• Videobrasil Festival, São Paulo, Brazil, 2023
• Tate Modern: Artwork Collections, London, United Kingdom, 2022
• Climates. Habitats. Environments., NTU Centre for Contemporary Art Singapore, Singapore (ongoing)
• Thailand Biennale, Korat, Thailand, 2021

Kent Chan’s Exhibition: ‘Three Acts of the Sun’

In January 2026, the NTU Centre for Contemporary Art Singapore opened Three Acts of the Sun, Kent Chan’s first solo exhibition in Singapore since 2019. Curated by Dr Anna Lovecchio as part of Singapore Art Week 2026, the exhibition examines global warming’s impact on the planet through a series of newly commissioned and recent artworks.

Three Acts of the Sun gathers speculative visions of the future by positioning the artist’s tropical imaginaries in direct conversation with climate crisis escalation. The exhibition features film, performance and print series, with the moving-image work Weather Casting at its centre. This newly commissioned film conflates prediction and actualisation, exploring a speculative era of ‘Tropics_Domain’ where AI-driven geoengineering systems named after ancient local deities attempt to control weather systems along the Asian-Pacific monsoon—one of the world’s largest weather systems connecting Southeast and East Asia.

The exhibition presents an innovative curatorial gesture by relinquishing climate control in the gallery space itself, allowing Singapore’s heat and humidity to become atmospheric contributors to the artwork. This decision intensifies visitors’ embodied engagement with the work’s central concerns, making felt rather than merely observed the climate crises Chan’s artworks address.

Residencies and Commissions

Kent Chan has held artist residencies at leading international institutions, including MMCA Residency Changdong in Seoul (2025), Art Explora in Paris (2024), Pivô Arte e Pesquisa in São Paulo (2024), Gasworks in London (2022), Jan van Eyck Academie in Maastricht (2019–2020), and NTU Centre for Contemporary Art Singapore (2017–2018).

Awards and Recognition

Chan’s work has been featured in major international exhibitions and film festivals including the Liverpool Biennial, Seoul Mediacity Biennale, Videobrasil, Tate Modern, and Onassis Foundation exhibitions. His practice has attracted critical attention from leading institutions across Europe, Asia and the Americas, establishing him as a significant voice in contemporary art addressing climate and environmental futures.

Artist Representation and Contact

You can follow Kent Chan on Ocula to learn more about his work, find out about art for sale, contact his gallery and keep up to date with upcoming exhibitions.

To find out which galleries represent Kent Chan and to enquire directly about his work, please follow him on Ocula or get in touch with Ocula’s art advisory team, who can assist with queries about commissioning, buying or selling work by the artist.

Kent Chan FAQs

Ocula | 2026