Jo-Lene Ong is a Malaysian curator with extensive experience in Asia and Europe. Her projects engages with counter-colonial worldviews and aesthetic strategies. Jo-Lene has been Program Advisor for the 12th Seoul Mediacity Biennale (2023), curator at Hartwig Art Production | Collection Fund (2021), co-curator of visual arts and theory at Other Futures Festival (2020), co-editor of Practice Space (2019) published by De Appel and NAME Publications, and a member of the curatorial team behind SUNSHOWER: Contemporary from Southeast Asia 1980s to Now (2017) held simultaneously at National Art Center, Tokyo and Mori Art Museum. She has been awarded research residencies and fellowships including MMCA Korea International Researcher Residency 2024, Ishibashi Foundation/Japan Foundation Research Fellow 2023, Delfina Foundation 2023, De Appel Curatorial Research Fellow 2019. Jo-Lene co-initiated CounterArchive, a recurring program proposing alternatives to the record of official history and is one third of the film club Canal++. 

CounterArchive: Fictional Healing
June 2024 [Kuala Lumpur], October 2024 [London]

MMCA Korea Changdong International Researcher Residency 2024

Domestic Resistance

  • 2023
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  • Curatorial, Events

Domestic Resistance is a two-part program forging alliances around domestic work and labour diasporas. The event brings artists, activists, and workers from East and Southeast Asia together in critical conversation, exchange, and communal activity.

Program Advisor, 12th Seoul Mediacity Biennale: THIS TOO, IS A MAP

  • 2023
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  • Curatorial

I was invited by Artistic Director, Rachael Rakes to join the 12th Seoul Mediacity Biennale, THIS TOO, IS A MAP as a Program Advisor.

Future Ancestors: Sensing and Recovering the Erased

  • 2023
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  • Events

On grandmothers, cosmic rocks, and polytemporal entanglements of existence. A talk on the works of Jesse Chun “SULLAE”, Finn Maätita and Jerrold Saija “Di Mata Pohon : Ancestral Download III”, Deborah Stratman “Last Things”, and my own research on my family history.

Urgent Ecologies: Colonialism, Capitalism, and Climate Change

  • 2023
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  • Teaching

A pilot program for an education module on the links between colonialism, capitalism, and climate change for Gerrit Rietveld Academie. The 2-day seminar features artist Marjet Zwaans, art collective Totomboti, indigenous climate activist Raki Ap, and Jo-Lene Ong.

Still We Thrive

  • 2023
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  • Curatorial

A film program presenting different enactments of refuge and sanctuary through thinking communally, dancing collectively, dreaming with future ancestors, and staying slippery between categories. The programme is curated for Refuge: fleeing, flowing, leaking edition of the Studium Generale Gerrit Rietveld Academie.The selected shorts use various film techniques and narrative structures, alongside human and beyond-human actors. […]

Slippery Tongues Sliding Horizons

  • 2023
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  • Curatorial

part of 5 Inclusion Tactics for 7 Curatorsat beautifulsoup.org / De Appel, Amsterdam / LAB111, Amsterdam An exhibition on the experiences of navigating multiple languages and existing between fixed categories. Bringing together works that perform a poetry of inclusion—gestures of opening up singular narratives and attending to porous boundaries—by Sung Hwan Kim (in musical collaboration […]

Mindi Matu – with(in) the forest

  • 2022
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  • Editorial

Text for Marjet Zwaans x Totomboti

SEA Contemporary Art in Southeast Asia

  • 2022
    • ,
  • Editorial

Contributed an entry on Lostgens Contemporary Art Space in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

Other Futures Festival 2021

  • 2022
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  • Curatorial

Other Futures is a multidisciplinary festival and exhibition that presents speculative visions of the future. The visual art exhibition Spectres from Beyond featured Jason Wee (SG),Natasha Tontey (ID), Bie Michels (BE), and new commissions from Mehraneh Atashi (IR/NL) and Müge Yilmaz (TR/NL).

Untitled XXXI/I – babhi-manyɛp/ babhi-bawɛt, (mbaŋ) by Em’kal Eyongakpa

  • 2021
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  • Curatorial

Oude Kerk, Amsterdam Hartwig Art Foundation Oude Kerk Amsterdam

Zandra Rhodes’ Bedroom, Or A Room to Read Auden by Maria Pask

  • 2021
    • ,
  • Curatorial

Kunstinstituut Melly, RotterdamHartwig Art Foundation 2020-21

Hartwig Art Foundation

  • 2020-21
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  • Curatorial

Art Production | Collection Fund Special Project 2020-21 The Hartwig Art Production | Collection Fund was initiated in 2020 to support artists in the realisation of ambitious productions. Artworks acquired through the Fund will be donated to the Dutch state. They become an integral part of the national art collection (‘Rijkscollectie’), available for institutions in the Netherlands […]

AICHI TRIENNALE 2019 Symposium

  • 2021
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  • Events

Practice Space

  • 2021
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  • Editorial

PRACTICE SPACE Edited by Jo-Lene Ong and Rachael Rakes Co-published by [NAME] Publications (USA) and DeAppel (NL)Distribution: Idea Books, NAME Publications Practice Space emerges out of an effort to better understand the conditions of contemporary art in disparate places. Featuring all new writing in a variety of discursive forms, among them commissioned essays, conversations, and […]

Elsewheres Within Here

  • 2021
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  • Curatorial

Elsewheres Within Here, curated by Jo-Lene Ong, will be the first exhibition Framer Framed presents in its new location. After being in Amsterdam-Noord for five years, Framer Framed has recently moved to the former Oostergasfabriek in Amsterdam-Oost. Participating artistsMehraneh Atashi, Milena Bonilla, Irene de Craen, Rumiko Hagiwara, Aram Lee, Arvo Leo, Natasha Papadopoulou, Thomas Swinkels, Remco […]

Spectres of Batavia in Stedelijk Museum

  • 2020
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  • Events

Brace for Impact

  • 2020
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  • Curatorial

“Technology’s influence on our individual and collective bodies is not always apparently dramatic or immediately mobilising. Instead, in anticipating its potential dangers and misfortunes, we find that its impact often lies in the bracing itself.” Brace For Impact, the final project of the De Appel Curatorial Programme 2017-18, critically investigates the relationship between technology and affect. […]

Unpacking the 3Package Deal

  • 2020
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  • Curatorial

Een zeer intieme kennismaking met 15 jonge, talentvolle (internationale) kunstenaars. Presenteren zij hun eindpresentatie tijdens ‘Unpacking the 3Package Deal’. De editie 2019-20 en 2018-19 is samengesteld door curator Jo-Lene Ong. Betaalbare woon- en werkruimte en een individueel ontwikkelbudget bieden aan talenten, en begeleiding van een interessant en handig netwerk, bestaande uit 50 belangrijke Amsterdamse instellingen – dat is de 3PackageDeal. Dit succesvolle programma van het […]

SUNSHOWER: Contemporary Art from Southeast Asia 1980s to Now

  • 2020
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  • Curatorial

The the largest-ever in scale, SUNSHOWER seeks to explore the many practices of contemporary art in Southeast Asia since 1980s. It aims to showcase its inconceivable dynamism of Southeast Asia that is somewhat nostalgic yet extraordinarily new. The “sunshower” – rain falling from clear skies – is an intriguing yet frequently-seen meteorological phenomenon in Southeast […]

The Gift of Time: Intergenerational Dynamics in Southeast Asia Art

  • 2020
    • ,
  • Events

Moderated an artists’ sharing with Nawin Rawanchaikul (TH), Vandy Rattana (KH) Chuah Chong Yong (MY) at Mori Art Museum, Tokyo A public program of SUNSHOWER: Contemporary Art from Southeast Asia 1980s to Now

My Story My Strength

  • 2020
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  • Curatorial

Women’s Centre for Change (WCC), Penang, Malaysia MediaThe Star: Survivors of violence tell their stories through artThe Star: Share your story via doodling

ILHAM CONTEMPORARY FORUM: Malaysia 2009-2017

  • 2020
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  • Curatorial

ILHAM CONTEMPORARY FORUM is an experimental programme that aims to explore what is currently happening in Malaysian arts and culture by inviting a range of professionals from various fields and positions, all younger than 39, to collaboratively curate an exhibition of recent artworks and cultural projects. ILHAM selected seven Project Curators, who in turn were tasked […]

Khabar dan Angin: Excursus on Faith in Kelantan

  • 2020
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  • Curatorial

An exhibition of artists’ field-notes from encounters with various faith communities across the Northeastern peninsular state straddling the Malaysia-Thai border. 8 artists and 2 curators went on field-trip to the largely rural Kelantan to engage in a circumstance whereby religious conviction pervades everyday life under the watchful moral investment of the state’s long ruling Islamic political party. […]

M_KNG SP_CE: We Are Where We Aren’t

  • 2020
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  • Curatorial

@wearewherewearent Okui Lala with Mostofa Kamal, As If Home, (2015)  Video 6.26min | Penang, MalaysiaAs If, Home explores the idea of home through the process of building a house. In this video, Mostofa, a skilled construction worker from Bangladesh, guides Okui, a local in building a model house together. “Whenever I look at a newly […]

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