Yuen Chee Wai

Yuen is a musician and artist working with sound and has performed and exhibited extensively locally and internationally. He has designed and composed sound for installation, dance, film and TV / radio. He is known for his improvised sound and noise explorations as well as his drone / ambient / field recording approaches to music making.

Chee Wai’s strong interest in Philosophy, Literature, Film and Cultural Studies often finds him incorporating textual ideas and concepts in his sound work, with themes like memory, loss, repetition and invisibility as main thought trajectories.

In 2008, together with Otomo Yoshihide (Japan), Ryu Hankil (Korea) and Yan Jun (China), they formed FEN – Far East Network, which made its debut at the Mimi Festival in Marseille. FEN has subsequently played in many countries and festivals around Europe and Asia. FEN is an ever breathing and evolving improv music quartet that aims to work predominantly with musicians and artists from all disciplines across Asia.

Chee Wai also plays synth and electronics for the avant / experimental rock band, The Observatory (Singapore). The Observatory, which has to date 6 full length albums – the most recent being Oscilla – often collaborates in a wide range of art and theatre projects. A four-piece band, The Observatory stays fully independent. It has toured Europe and Asia extensively, and also has several music programme initiatives, like Playfreely, to present interesting musicians and giving them a platform to collaborate and present music work that is normally not entirely conventional.

Chee Wai is Project Director for the Asian Music Network – a project that is part of Ensembles Asia helmed by Otomo Yoshihide. In it, Chee Wai is also the curator of the Asian Meeting Festival. In all his years being a musician, he has actively performed and connected fellow Asian musicians working with experimental and improve music, and also continually collaborating with artists from all disciplines. His hope is to develop a strong Asian community of artists and musicians.

He was one of the artists in the inaugural Singapore Biennale, and a highly sought after designer.