Cheong See Min
Curated by Clara Che Wei Peh
After the Pineapple marks Cheong See Min’s first exhibition in Thailand, presenting a new body of work that culminates years of exploration and experimentation with the pineapple as fruit, material, and myth.
The pineapple has long been steeped in intrigue. Native to South America, it was brought to Europe in the 16th century, where it became a coveted status symbol associated with royalty, luxury, and even dubbed “the king of fruits”, before spreading to Asia through colonial trade and plantations in the 16th and 17th centuries. Its image soon appeared in paintings, architecture and literature, evoking the mystique of the tropics while serving as a stark emblem of colonialism, as one of the many treasures extracted from conquered territories. Vivid descriptions of the exotic fruit appear in Chinese writings from the 16th century, detailing its appearance and taste. Cheong responds to these historical fascinations in Pineapple I and II, weaving abstracted, exaggerated depictions of the fruit, presenting it as it was once perceived and imagined: an unruly, almost beastly delicacy to be conquered and dispersed.
For Cheong, pineapple began as a personal inquiry. Her curiosity stems from her mother and grandmother’s labour on pineapple farms in Johor, Malaysia, and her family home’s proximity to these fields. The fruit, both as subject and visual motif, recurred throughout her upbringing, compelling her to investigate its arrival and significance in her home state, where a town is even named Pekan Nanas (Pineapple Town). Cheong’s research in the pineapple formally began in 2019 and deepened in 2023 during her residency at Gasworks, London, supported by The Institutum. There, she examined the history of plants and fibres exported from Malaysia to England during the 18th century British Malaya period. By weaving together botanical records, colonial archives, and historical images with autobiographical reflections on family stories, she traces the fruit’s layered narratives and its impact on land, economy, and—most crucially—its people, from Malaysia to the wider Southeast Asia region.
Working primarily with textiles, Cheong engages deeply with the material history of pineapple leaf fibre, a natural fibre documented as early as the 16th century. Historical records point to industries based on the material in Brazil and the Philippines, where piña cloth was mentioned as early as 1571 and remains culturally significant today.1 The fibre is treasured not only for its delicate quality but also for its laborious production process, from the meticulous extraction of strands from the leaf to their transformation into fabric. Cheong honours this tradition by harvesting the fibre herself, carefully scraping it from the leaves, while also collecting material variations through her research and travels. In doing so, she expands the fibre’s potential as a medium bridging the past and present.
In Cheong’s work, pineapple leaf fibre operates as both material and metaphor—a spectral presence that evokes the fruit’s conspicuous absence. Where one might expect the pineapple’s vibrant, spiked form, instead emerges its fibrous ghost, creating a void that speaks to colonial erasures and the fruit’s troubled past and present. This conceptual approach finds its potent expression in The Lost Pineapple Cannery works, where the titular fruit manifests only through its material traces, its absence echoing the hollowed-out legacies of plantation economies. Drawing from archival sources, Cheong reworks historical representations of pineapple labour and trade. The Lost Pineapple Cannery I specifically references 1960s and 70s production, a pivotal era when Malaysia stood among the world’s top three pineapple exporters along Costa Rice and the Philippines. This period marks both the apex and subsequent decline of the industry in the region, rendering Cheong’s material interventions even more poignant.
The tensions between presence and absence reverberate throughout Cheong’s practice. Whether depicting the pineapple itself or the labourers and planters who shaped its history, her works often represent subjects through hollowed silhouettes, transforming them into objects of projected power. We Walk Barefoot, They Sit in the Car extends this narrative, weaving an image sourced from archival records of Thailand’s plantation economy. The composition captures a pair of foreign governors sheltered within the comforts of an automobile, while a local figure stands beside it—a scene frozen in the inequities of colonial encounter. Though drawn from a specific historical artifact in Thailand, the work speaks to broader patterns of conquest and subjugation, patterns that persist today in the stark juxtaposition between those who wield power and those who do not. Through these layered representations, Cheong excavates the material and social histories embedded in the pineapple’s journey, revealing how colonial pasts continue to shape contemporary realities.
Curated by Clara Che Wei Peh, this exhibition extends the artist and curator’s ongoing dialogue on uncovering overlooked histories through personal and material narratives. Their collaboration was initiated in 2023 by The Institutum, a Singapore-based non-profit arts organisation. In situating this conversation in Thailand, now one of the world’s largest pineapple producers, the exhibition reflects on our turbulent relationships to land, labour, and global economies through the eye of the pineapple: its fruit, its leaves, and its aftermath.
1 https://www.sfomuseum.org/exhibitions/pineapple-pina-philippine-textile
