11 October – 7th December 2025 | Open to the Public
Cultprint is proud to announce exhibition The City of Willows (2025) an interactive art installation by artist Chong Yan Chuah and scholar Simon Soon. Curated by Deborah Lim, The City of Willows (2025) returns to Penang following a huge reception at the George Town Festival 2025 and has been significantly expanded to include the Geneacosm Index (2023, 2025).
The City of Willows (2025) reimagines the rituals of 19th-century Chinese secret societies (Triads) in the Malay archipelago. Players embark on a mythic journey through Southeast Asian scenes—from durian stalls to Penang’s Kek Lok Si Temple—searching for the symbolic sanctuary, the “City of Willows”.
This exhibition features the Geneacosm Index (2023, 2025), a catalogue of 113 eerie and uncanny portraits that explore speculative Peranakan futures through machine vision, converting portraiture into a catalogued laboratory. The Geneacosm Index uses curated methods such as #Lineage Algorithms to systematically generate and organize portraits. These techniques, which also include #ElementalMapping turn the portraiture into a “laboratory” for recording possible genealogies.
Completing the experience, a disembodied voice declares traces of presence and absence, history and mythology. These traces invite reflection and further dreaming, dissolving the boundaries of past, present, and imagined futures.
The City of Willows (2025) was first commissioned by Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin.
Exhibition Dates: October 11th – December 7th 2025, every Friday to Sunday 12pm – 7pm.
Private View: 5pm-7pm, October 10th
Opening Party: 10pm, October 11th
Artist Dialogue: 2pm, October 12th
Venue: 35, Lebuh Melayu, 10300 George Town, Penang.
Admission: Free Entry
About the Artists
Chong Yan Chuah (he/him) is a Sino-Malaysian artist, architect and designer whose work bridges digital imagery, game art, and installation, between simulated space, fictive narratives and imagined bodies, redefining boundaries between physical environments and constructed worlds. Trained in architecture, he has been commissioned and exhibited at the Royal Academy of Arts, Royal Institute of British Architects, Haus derKulturen der Welt Berlin, NTU ADM Gallery Singapore, National Museum of Singapore, NOVA. The Staatliches Bauhaus, Academy of Sciences Malaysia (ASM), ArtScience Museum Singapore, National Art Gallery Malaysia, Maybank Gallery, Petronas Gallery and Ilham Gallery.
Simon Soon (dia/he/him) is a lecturer who teaches in the Art History and Curatorship Program at the University of Melbourne. His research interest spans 19th and 20th century Southeast Asia. His practice is collaborative and focuses on the adaptive reuse of historical images that explore their myth-making and story-telling potentials. Soon’s works have been exhibited in Singapore, Hong Kong, Busan, Kathmandu, Warsaw, and Sydney, among others. He is the co-founder and editorial member of Southeast of Now: Directions in Contemporary and Modern Art in Asia, a peer-reviewed journal published by NUS Press. Soon lives in Melbourne, Australia.
About the Curator
Deborah Lim (she/her) is an independent curator operating at the crossroads of art and technology, where intersections and hybridity shape new ways of viewing and experiencing culture. She was formerly Curator of Exhibitions at ArtScience Museum in Singapore where she worked on exhibitions including Iris van Herpen: Sculpting the Senses (2025); Goddess: Brave. Bold. Beautiful. (2024) and Notes from the Ether: From NFTs to AI (2023). She is part of the Advisory Committee for the Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts, Centre for Lifelong Education, Singapore.