Pleased to share Ho Tzu Nyen’s new site-specific work P for Power: Up Down, presented at New Museum, followed later in October by P for Power: Double Life of P (2026) at the Ulsan Art Museum in Ulsan, Korea.

Installed within the Museum’s two glass-front elevators, the work centers on five Singaporean children at the threshold of adolescence. Each time a visitor presses a floor button, an AI system generates a new image sequence in real time, drawing on conversations between the artist and a chatbot regarding the nature of power. As a result, one of the five protagonists appears onscreen and delivers a text in the form of a mantra, question, or riddle, reflecting on the concept across sociopolitical and cultural contexts. Here, AI functions not simply as a tool for producing images, but as a generative structure through which narratives and identities remain open to change.

The work’s mutable nature connects to Ho’s longstanding engagement with histories and identities that resist singular or fixed definition, particularly in relation to Southeast Asia. In works such as The Critical Dictionary of Southeast Asia (CDOSEA) (2017–ongoing) and T for Time (2023–ongoing), algorithmic systems continually recombine audiovisual materials, allowing narratives to unfold in ever-shifting configurations. Extending this generative logic through AI, P for Power: Up Down approaches power itself as relational and continually becoming. Shaped by a constellation of forces—from the visitor’s touch to the passage of time—the work enacts power as an ongoing process, continuously made and remade through each encounter.

P for Power: Up Down is presented in partnership with Hyundai Motor Company as part of the Hyundai Translocal Series, an initiative fostering collaboration between art institutions in Korea and around the world.