Okui Lala

Chew Win Chen aka Okui Lala (b. 1991) is an artist and cultural worker based in Penang, Malaysia. Her practice spans from video, performance to community engagement. Okui looks into migratory backgrounds and translation processes to explore the notion of home and self-identities in extension with the larger social, cultural and political milieu. She has held a panel discussion with herself in 4 languages (Malay, Mandarin, English and Hokkien) in “My language proficiency” (2017), a video performance work which was exhibited at the National Art Gallery Malaysia. In her most recent work “Chinese Whisper〈: 天頂一粒星，地下開書齋〉”(2018) , she invited her aunt and dad to recite a Teochew nursery rhyme with her. Okui was a participating artist in the 2016 Saitama Triennale and was also a recipient of the 2017 Japan Foundation Asia Centre Fellowship Grant for her artistic research project on migration, mobilities and identities in Myanmar and Japan.