The Malaysian-Chinese artist Lawrence Lek has been announced as the recipient of the Frieze London 2024 Artist Award. The award is a collaboration with the contemporary arts organization Forma and is given to early- and mid-career artists, with the goal of providing them funding to create an ambitious new work to be presented at Frieze London.

Lek's proposal was selected by a jury consisting of: Canan Batur (curator and researcher, Frieze London), Miriam Zulfiqar (Director, Artangel), Eva Langret (Director, Frieze London) and Chris Rawcliffe (Artistic Director, Forma). Lek's practice delves into issues surrounding global complexities – both real and virtual – through a fusion of video games, filmmaking and electronic music.

Lawrence Lek, Black Cloud Highway, 2023. Sadie Coles HQ. Photo: Katie Morrison.

For this year's edition of the Frieze London, which will be held October 9-13, 2024, Lek will create a multimedia installation titled Guanyin: Confessions of a Former Carebot. The project incorporates elements of narrative worldbuilding and mechanical sculpture to draw viewers into a gaming environment. Viewers will follow the story of Guanyin (named after the Buddhist goddess of mercy), the eponymous carebot – a cyborg therapist whose purpose is to talk other chatbots out of self-destruction.

Lawrence Lek is a self-described simulation artist who advances the concept of Sinofuturism through his immersive installations which explore existential and spiritual themes through the lens of science fiction. His work is currently on view at 4A Centre for Contemporary Asian Arts in Sydney and has previously been featured at Biennale de l'Image en Mouvement in Geneva (2024), Julia Stoschek Foundation in Düsseldorf (2022-2023) and at Sadie Coles HQ in London (2023). For more details on Lek's upcoming presentation at Frieze London, refer to the Frieze site.

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