Kongkee 江記 Malaysia, b. 1977

Kongkee aka Kong Khong-chang, is an animation director and visual artist based in Hong Kong and London. His work muses upon people’s relationships with each other and with our environment. The aesthetic language of his work merges Kongkee’s interest in vernacular culture, our everyday experiences, and sci-fi fantasy.

Highly involved in the design of the school magazine during his high school years, Kongkee was particularly fascinated by the old-fashioned printing and color schemes and this is the reason he keeps studying colors in details with enthusiasm. “Black may not be purely black, it can be reddish black or greenish black”. Kongkee describes the dramatic and explicit use of sharp and shocking colors is very “Hong Kong” - or, more accurately, rarely used in recent designs but on the contrary very popular among locals in the last generation. In Kongkee's works, the presence of landmarks and cultural symbols in the story such as the old Lee Theatre, trams, gowns, and Yau Ma Tei Theatre constructs a futuristic city of decadence which is virtual but indeed really Hong Kong.

Penguin Lab studio, which Kongkee co-founded in 2008, created the comic book “Travel to Hong Kong with Blur” for the Britpop band Blur’s 2015 Hong Kong-themed album “The Magic Whip.” In 2012, his graphic novel “Detournements: La littérature de Hong Kong en bande dessinée” (coauthored with Chihoi) was published in French in Europe. Kongkee's original animated short “Dragon’s Delusion: Preface” was awarded the 22nd DigiCon6 Asia Grand Prize by Japan TBS in 2020. In 2022, he was commissioned by M+ Museum in Hong Kong to create the interactive video installation “Flower In The Mirror”.

Spanning across 2022-2024, his major solo exhibition “Kongkee: Warring States Cyberpunk — the Cyber Citrus Fizz” debuted at the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco, toured to Wrightwood 659, Chicago, and Tai Kwun Contemporary, Hong Kong.