Premio Combat Prize

Ho Seok Kee is an interdisciplinary artist from Singapore. Kee graduated with a Diploma in Fine Art (Distinction) at Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts (NAFA) in 2016 and was also one of the two valedictorians for her cohort. She is a recipient of the NAFA Entry Scholarship (Degree) in 2017. She graduated with Bachelor of Arts (First Class Honours) in Fine Art at NAFA/University of Loughborough (UK) in 2018. Kee won the Silver Award of the UOB Painting of The Year 2019, Established category. She is also a member of the Siao-Tao Chinese Seal-Caving Calligraphy and Painting Society.Her key practices involve research about her living environment, immigration and transplantation, science and technology innovations. She works predominantly in Chinese ink. Kee finds inspiration from the precision and meticulous processes involved in the execution of each ink painting, which is transcendental in its own form.Convergence uses rice grains as a representational force of people coming from various countries taking roots in Singapore. Although the immigrants are from diverse cultures, they have a common food staple, rice. Painting of rice grains was inspired by a Song dynasty painter, Mifu, who created ‘Mi’ or rice textured dots to paint misty landscapes. In her series of rice paintings, Kee attempts to work towards a new expression of traditional ink, that paradoxically, operates within the frame of poetic conventions of a traditional Chinese painting. Countless white rice grains relate to western theories of abstraction and reduction, while repetition and emptiness convey concepts of Taoism. In Convergence, the viewers decide which is the white space. Leaving white space is an important element in a traditional Chinese painting. The space breathes energy or qi into a painting. Convergence designs the white space with white rice grains to invoke the idea of “being and non-being” within the “white-on-white” expanse of the painting. Navigating within the whites of the painting, to reconcile the white space to nothingness in the optical sense becomes ambiguous.