Ho Mei Kei
b. 1993, Malaysia
Mei Kei’s work incorporated the notion of child play. Play is a right of childhood, it is spontaneous and fun. It also represents a crucial aspect of children’s physical, intellectual and social development. It helps children education, social skills and therapeutic benefits too. Her work revisited child play, it is an innocence play in just like them during the process without any worry and commitment. It is as simple as it is.
We used to practice through exercise books in our learning process at school, exercise book is a good blank space for practice and express. It may be considered as the way to record the way we grow and part of our life process too. It is a space to play.
In her latest solo exhibition in 2020 in TAKSU Kuala Lumpur, titled “New Mundane”, she used the theme “Norma Baharu” or the new normal in the way of life where she includes the item we took it for granted before and now it became our essential.
Working as a children art teacher she discovered that children reveal their emotions through doodling and tell the story in their drawings. She observes how children doodle and incorporated them into my work. She adopted those images for her painting and transformed them into her own visual language. It reminds her of the way she was when she was little. This process taps into the memory about her childhood where it has a lot of activities including reading picture books, playing with toys, doodling on exercise books, singing and playing music rather than playing with the latest technological gadgets.
Born in 1993 in Kuala Lumpur, Mei Kei completed Diploma in Fine Art in Dasein Academy of Art in 2016. She was a recipient of several awards including in 2017 where she won the Jury’s Award, Young Contemporaries (Bakat Muda Sezaman) organised by National Art Gallery (KL). Currently, she works as a children art teacher from 2011 till present.
