Old Wave Brings Empty Shells: Interview with Minstrel Kuik
By Chloé Wolifson
Portrait of MINSTREL KUIK. Photo by Liew Kwai Fei. Courtesy the artist.
Kuala Lumpur-based photographer and multimedia artist Minstrel Kuik was born in 1976 to a Chinese migrant family in a Malaysian fishing village. Her father briefly pursued a painting career in Singapore in the 1960s before financial and familial responsibilities brought him back to Malaysia. When he took up his brushes again in the ’80s, Kuik was inspired to study painting herself. Attending a Chinese-Malaysian school meant her matriculation was not recognised by the local universities, so instead, Kuik followed in the footsteps of many Chinese Malaysians at the time, moving to Taiwan to study painting, before continuing in France.
