Art as Social Cartography

Mapping Memory, Community & Everyday Landscapes

Kenneth Wong See Huat

Independent Curator | Founder, People Ideas Culture

Portfolio for the GB Academy International Curator Course 2026


  • Underlined projects throughout are linked — click to explore further.

Curating Beyond the Gallery

"How do communities leave traces that institutions fail to collect?"

My curatorial practice investigates how contemporary art can function as social cartography—mapping relationships, memories, rituals, and everyday life that conventional archives often overlook.

Working across contemporary art, cultural landscapes, museum practice, architecture, food culture, and socially engaged art, I see exhibitions as living infrastructures rather than static displays.

Instead of positioning the curator as the sole author, I cultivate collaborative processes where artists, communities, researchers, and cultural institutions become co-producers of knowledge.

My curatorial tools

Walking

Listening

Food

Oral history

Mapping

Digital interpretation

Community participation

Walking as Curatorial Method

Walking is not documentation.

It is research.

It is conversation.

It is exhibition-making.

Projects such as Art as Social Cartography and the Bangsar Heritage Walks demonstrate how walking reveals invisible layers of migration, labour, commerce, ritual, and neighbourhood memory.

Outcomes

Psychogeographic research

Community mapping

Oral histories

Heritage interpretation

Public walks

Social cartography

Bangsar Heritage Walk | Kuala Lumpur

Food as Memory Mapping

Food is never simply food.

It is:

Memory

Care

Migration

Ritual

Resistance

Community

Projects including Beyond the Plate investigate how food functions as a multisensory archive through recipes, kitchens, communal meals, and everyday practices.

Rather than exhibiting food as an object, I curate food as a living relationship.

Siam Reversed

From Demolition to Collective Memory

Following the demolition of Penang's last traditional Siamese house, I initiated Siam Reversed, a collaborative food-art performance that transformed grief into collective remembrance.

Food became an edible memorial.

Participants reconstructed memory through taste, storytelling, ritual, and artistic intervention.

Rather than preserving a monument, the project preserved relationships.

Museum Futures

What might tomorrow's museum look, feel, and taste like?

My MuseumNext research explores museums beyond collecting and display.

Projects such as Forecasting Museums Through Community, Memory & Food and CultureAtlas investigate:

Community-generated archives

Digital cultural mapping

Participatory interpretation

Food as intangible heritage

Museums as civic platforms

The museum becomes a living ecosystem rather than a storage institution.

Bodies as Maps

My Asian Cultural Council Fellowship expanded my research into queer art, Asian diaspora, and embodied memory.

Rather than treating diaspora as displacement alone, I explore how bodies, movement, food, grief, and public space generate alternative cultural geographies.

How do bodies, food, grief and land become maps?

Walking becomes an archive.

Memory becomes landscape.

Curating becomes mapping.

Public Programmes as Curatorial Practice

For me, exhibitions are only one form of curating.

Equally important are conversations that allow ideas to evolve through public exchange.

Selected engagements

Pratt Institute

MuseumNext

Interpret Europe

ICOMOS International

Universities and museums across Asia

Teaching, writing, and dialogue are extensions of the exhibition itself.

Selected Publications

Writing allows curatorial research to continue beyond the exhibition.

Selected works

Architecture of Care (Leonardo, 2026)

Beyond the Plate (Interpret Europe, 2026)

Writing is another exhibition space.

Current Curatorial Questions

My current practice continues to investigate:

Can exhibitions become living archives?

Can walking become curatorial methodology?

Can food become museum collections?

Can digital platforms strengthen community memory?

How can contemporary art sustain everyday cultural landscapes?

"I do not see exhibitions as the end of research. I see them as the beginning of new conversations."

Current initiatives

CultureAtlas

Echoes in Between

Museum Futures

Social Cartography