Museum MACAN presents a special presentation by a textile artist from Sarawak, Marcos Kueh, titled Kenyalang Circus.
23.05–04.10.2026
About the Exhibition
The Kenyalang Circus series emerges from the socio-economic landscape of Sarawak, where tourism and development frame cultural identity as a primary attraction. Since the 19th century, the region has been represented as an exotic frontier, a narrative that continues through ethno-tourism, where Indigenous cultural practices are positioned within performative presentations. Kueh highlights the tension as cultural symbols operate within broader circuits of representation and economy.
Marcos Kueh’s work resonates with broader conditions across the Nusantara region, where cultural distinctiveness is increasingly mobilised as symbolic capital within tourism economies. Kenyalang Circus invites us to reflect on what happens to traditional cultures amid changing times, while showing that memory, identity, and culture continue to evolve within modern life.
About the Artist
Marcos Kueh is a textile artist from Sarawak, Borneo, whose practice engages the shifting meanings of cultural imagery in a rapidly transforming region. Trained in graphic design, Kueh operates at the intersection of vernacular textile traditions and contemporary popular visual culture. Through industrial digital weaving, he reworks sacred Bornean symbols into complex visual fields that question how cultural traditions are mobilised, circulated, and reinterpreted within modernity.
His works have entered the collections of Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam and Museum Voorlinden, and he has been recognised with the Ron Mandos Young Blood Award (2022). Kueh’s debut solo exhibition was Kenyalang Circus at The Back Room, Malaysia (2023), and his second solo exhibition, Smooth Sailing, recently opened at esea contemporary, United Kingdom (2025).
Other notable recent exhibitions include Myths, Dreams and New Realities at Saatchi Gallery, United Kingdom (2025); ILHAM Art Show 2025 at ILHAM Gallery, Malaysia; The Calling of Home at Tina Kim Gallery, United States (2025); and Kenyalang Circus: Ibu Pertiwiku at the National Art Gallery, Malaysia (2024).
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