Artist Talk: Marcos Kueh — Love, Labour, and Cultural Repair

Join us for an evening conversation on the occasion of Marcos Kueh’s first institutional solo exhibition, ‘Smooth Sailing, 一路順風’, at esea contemporary. Taking its title from a Chinese parting blessing, the exhibition reflects on journeys, memory, and the afterlives of migration — tracing how textiles hold both the weight of exploitation and the promise of solidarity.

The artist Marcos Kueh will be in conversation with Amy George, Senior Curator of Collections, Textiles & Wallpaper at the Whitworth, University of Manchester, and Dr Vera Mey, Asia Triennial Manchester 6 Curatorial Research Fellow at Manchester School of Art. Moderated by Jo-Lene Ong, curator at esea contemporary, the discussion will take us through Kueh’s process in developing this major new work — from researching collections at The Whitworth and the People’s History Museum during his residency at esea contemporary, to expanding his practice into sculptural and kinetic forms. Together, the conversation will reflect on how his evolving practice meditates on endurance, abandonment, and fragile hope, suggesting diaspora as an act of cultural repair and imagination.

Anchoring these ideas is Kueh’s new installation, a sculptural tableau of persistence and loss: a fractured sail and mast recalling migration and rupture, an embroidery machine labouring endlessly in solitude, and fabric remnants bearing well-wishing talismans and faded emblems of work. Through this poetic assemblage, ‘Smooth Sailing, 一路順風’ contemplates how acts of making might hold space for both exploitation and solidarity — for what has been broken, and what might still be repaired.

esea contemporary will present a partner exhibition, Marcos Kueh: ‘Smooth Sailing, 一路順風’, in parallel with the triennial. Curated by Jo-Lene Ong with Associate Curator Julia Jiang, the exhibition debuts an immersive textile installation work, specially co-commissioned by esea contemporary, Manchester Metropolitan University, and the Centre for Heritage, Arts and Textile (CHAT), Hong Kong SAR.