Royce Ng is a Hong Kong-based, Australian artist and researcher whose academic interests include animation, media theory, virtual reality and contemporary art. In 2024, he received a PhD from the School of Creative Media at City University of Hong Kong, submitting a thesis which looked at the relationship between visualisation-based meditation practices in esoteric Buddhism and virtual reality. His postdoctoral research examines the use of AI in digital afterlife technologies through the theoretical lens of media theory and the concept of ‘animism’ while he is also researching the use of new, open-source generative AI and agentic AI tools in arts education pedagogy. He has published papers in the journals Cultural Studies, IEEE and Frontiers in Virtual Reality and is currently working on his first monograph based on his PhD research.

As an artist he works primarily with 3D animation, game engines, virtual reality, installation and performance to examine how trans-national trade, history, drugs and technology intersect with more-than-human ontologies. He is one half of the artist-duo Zheng Mahler with anthrozoologist Daisy Bisenieks who from 2013-2016 were artist-in-residence at the Johann Jacobs Museum in Zurich where they presented two solo exhibitions on the economic relationship between Africa and Asia 'A Season in Shell' (2014) and 'Mutual Aid' (2016). Zheng Mahler have held solo exhibitions at PHD Group, Hong Kong (2023; 2026), at the Johann Jacobs Museum, Zurich (2014; 2016) and will present their first solo institutional show in Asia at the Seoul Museum of Art (Buk SEMA) in 2027. In 2023, they were nominated for the LG Guggenheim art and technology prize and their works are in the permanent collection of the M+ museum in Hong Kong. They have participated in group exhibitions at the Klima Biennale in Vienna, Austria (2026), Thailand Biennale (2025), Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, USA (2024), Framer Framed, Amsterdam, The Netherlands (2024), KW Institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin, Germany (2024), Kunsthalle Mainz, Germany (2023), Helsinki Biennial, Finland (2023), UCCA Dune, Beidaihe, China (2022/23), Singapore Art Museum (2022), Shanghai Biennale, China (2021), Museum of Contemporary Art, Antwerp, Belgium (2021; 2025), Asia Culture Complex, Gwangju, South Korea (2021), Whitechapel Gallery, London, UK (2017), Para Site, Hong Kong (2016). In 2015 they were selected to represent Australia at the Pavillion Without Borders for PERFORMA biennale in New York City.