Tan Zi Hao is a multi-disciplinary artist who works predominantly in installation and performance art. Hao’s works explore the discourses of power within the postcolonial setting and probe the disjuncture in the production and contestation of history. Language, multilingualism, and linguistic ideologies are subjects that inform most of Hao’s text-based installations. Hao completed his bachelor’s in international communications studies and master’s in international relations at the University of Nottingham Malaysia. Hao is currently completing his PhD in southeast Asian studies at the National University of Singapore. Aside from being an artist, Hao is a designer, researcher, writer, and zinester.
Kedai-Kedai Merdeka is a typeface that considers how the Latin alphabet can be inflected by the aesthetics of non-Latin alphabets. It is an experimental variant of our prior typeface Kedai-Kedai, which is influenced by condensed Sans-Serifs from existing multilingual and vernacular signage of Malaysian shophouses, also called kedai-kedai in Malay. Such shophouse signage prevailed between… Continue reading Kedai-Kedai Merdeka: Creolizing Typography