Alfonse Chiu

Alfonse Chiu is a designer, artist, and curator. Presently a graduate student in Environmental Design at the Yale School of Architecture, their research investigates the spatial imaginaries of tropicality, and histories of agro-capital networks established by colonial powers between South/east Asia and Latin America through the movements of tropical crops and commodities. Their current project revolves around a situated analysis of plantation capital and infrastructure in colonial Southeast Asia, its present-day afterlife, and its relationship to parallel systems of exploitation in South America. In addition to their academic work, Chiu maintains an active artistic and curatorial practice across art, architecture, and cinema. They are the founder of the Centre for Urban Mythologies (CUM), a research studio and platform excavating the im/material detritus of capital across the contested geographies of the Global South.