In O for Opium, Ho Tzu Nyen immerses viewers in a sensory meditation on the opium trade’s haunting legacy and its entwinement with colonial power, desire, and the flows of maritime capitalism. Anchored in the historical fact that up to 60% of British trade in the 19th century consisted of opium moving from India to China—via port cities like Singapore—the work situates the drug not merely as a narcotic but as a potent symbol of empire, resistance, and transmutation. Part of Ho’s ongoing Critical Dictionary of Southeast Asia, O for Opium examines the letter 'O' as a dual cipher—for 'Opium' and 'Ocean.' Through this convergence, the work unfolds as a hallucinatory voyage: images of clipper ships, poppy fields, opium pipes, and spirit lamps drift across the screen like smoke, Robert De Niro is seen at the opium smokehouse from the 1984 film Once Upon a Time in America, historical footage of soldiers smoking blend with farmers harvesting poppies in fields. Accompanying these visuals, a polyphonic soundscape of whispering, singing, and narrating voices unspools a fragmented, non-linear history.

Rather than telling a singular story, the video evokes the mutable nature of opium itself—slipping between object, commodity, metaphor, and myth. The opium pipe becomes a vessel of colonial violence and sensual escapism; the ocean becomes both a physical route and a metaphor for the vast, murky entanglements of empire. Using archival material, found footage, and poetic text, Ho aestheticizes the imagery of intoxication while simultaneously unmasking its violent undercurrents. The work does not present history as fixed but as a narcotic fog—seductive, elusive, and constructed from multiple perspectives. In this way, O for Opium aligns with Ho’s broader project: to disturb linear narratives of Southeast Asian history and replace them with layered, spectral meditations that invite both critical reflection and sensory immersion.