Keynote Speaker 2

Eddin KHOO, Director–Founder, PUSAKA, Malaysia

Eddin Khoo is a poet, writer, translator, journalist and teacher. He is the founder of Pusaka, one of the region’s leading cultural centres, and the publishing house Kala, which devotes itself to publishing literary translations from the world’s languages into Malay. He has worked intimately with Malaysia’s custodians of the traditional and ritual arts including shadow puppeteers, musicians, dramatists and dancers. Among his preoccupations is researching aspects of oral transmission, cultural and religious politics and aspects of ritual in traditional theatre. In recognition of his work in culture, Eddin was selected as one of the Asians of the Year 2006 by Channel News Asia, Singapore. Eddin is the artistic director and curator for KataKatha – Southeast Asian Conversations on Culture and the Arts, which culminated in an exhibition, This World, Out Here, at the Maybank Gallery in 2016, as well as a film and publication. Eddin has curated numerous art exhibitions, including Wallscapes: the Merdeka Painting by Wang Lan, Wang Xu and Shen Jiawei (2008), Photojournalism and the Imaging of Modern Malaysia (2007), Angin (2006), and Face the Act (2002) – all for Galeri Petronas – and was a consultant for Crescent Moon: Islamic Art and Civilization in Southeast Asia, an exhibition at the Art Gallery of South Australia (2005). Eddin Khoo is the author, with Farish A. Noor, of a study on traditional Malay woodcarving, The Spirit of Wood. He edited an autobiography of the celebrated Malaysian artist Ibrahim Hussein, entitled Ib: A Life (2010). Forthcoming books include a collection of poetry, All the World’s Figures and The Verandah of Mecca – a memoir of his work with ritual artists in the Malaysian state of Kelantan. He has translated the Indonesian poet Goenawan Mohamad and the Malaysian poet Latiff Mohidin into English and will publish his Malay translation of Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass in 2018. He is presently also compiling and editing the complete writings of his father, the Malaysian historian Khoo Kay Kim.