Sheau Yun Lim

Sheau is a designer, curator, and researcher. She is interested in narratives of the past and of contemporary crises, especially as they relate to Southeast Asia. She is currently curating an exhibition on the political and affective economies of the plantation for Ilham Gallery, Kuala Lumpur (forthcoming April 2025) and KADIST San Francisco (forthcoming 2026).

Sheau graduated from Yale with a BA in Architecture (History, Theory, and Criticism concentration) in 2019. Her graduating thesis "The Specter of Borobudur," a 20th-century history of the mediatic encounters of an 8th-century temple, was awarded the John Addison Porter Prize. Prior to pursuing her M.Arch, Sheau was Research Lead at Malaysia Design Archive and co-founded an independent publishing house, cloud projects. She continues to be active in both organisations. In addition to curatorial and exhibition writing for art galleries such as Ilham Gallery, The Back Room, and A+ Works of Art, her essays and criticism have been published in ArtReview Asia, ArtAsiaPacific, Art & Market, Further Reading, and more.

Sheau's work has been supported by fellowships from Yale (2017-20), and grants from organisations including the DAAD Artists-in-Berlin Program (2020), the UCLA Modern Endangered Archive Program (2021), the Foundation for Arts Initiatives (2020), Malaysia's Cultural Economy Development Agency (CENDANA) (2022), and more.