Visual Arts

The Movingly Minute Scale of a Restricted Life, Photographs by Lavender Chang

Organised by: Alliance française de Singapour
  • Date:
    8 Jul - 23 Aug 2016
  • Time:
    Mon – Fri: 12:00pm – 8:00pm Sat: 12:00pm – 6:00pm Closed on Sun and Public Holidays
  • Venue:
    Alliance français de Singapour, Société Générale Gallery, level 2
    Alliance français de Singapour, Société Générale Gallery, level 2Alliance français de Singapour, Société Générale Gallery, level 2
  • Admission:
    Free

Synopsis:

Lavender Chang comes back to Alliance française with her new series The Movingly Minute Scale of a Restricted Life. Lavender was the final winner of the 6th France + Singapore Photographic Arts Awards (FSPAA) with her series I Walked, And Laid Down On This Warm, Bare Earth. Her works were exhibited among the 10 finalists at the Société Générale Gallery in a group exhibition held in September 2015 and is now having her solo exhibition.
When studying the genre of family photography, scholar Marianne Hirsch stressed on a need to decipher its coded nature in order to unveil relations to dominant family ideologies and narratives.

The family photo is hence a cryptic vault of power, pain and secrets as much as it is an instrument for displaying cohesion and togetherness.

Drawing upon her personal experiences with the scripts and struggles of familial life, The Movingly Minute Scale of a Restricted Life by Lavender Chang contemplates on the dualism of how indelible hurt every so often resides under the same roof as unconditional love.

Using a pinhole camera positioned on the windows of various family homes, she captures portraits of bean plants she grew and harvested, along with the scenery beyond, through the technique of solargraphy. Left in the sun over days, the camera obscura resembles an incubator in which family relations, symbolized by the bean plants, are literally and figuratively developing in. Yet, it is a black box of the unknown, parallel to how families are often impenetrable to an outsider's perception and understanding, despite the universality in issues they face.

The use of long and multiple photographic exposures play upon the concept of optical unconscious, rendering visible what is otherwise invisible to the human eye, surfacing unconscious and latent thoughts to conscious levels. Suffocation or liberation? Security or captivity? Such notions remain grey. These one-of-kind solargraphs eventually fade with prolonged exposure, an ephemerality that is not unlike the transience of life.

Surreal and hauntingly beautiful, these images are more than botanical studies. Masking a suppressed violence, they are in fact records of the plants' slow but certain expiration. Loose splotches of residue expelled on the prints hint of traces of struggle, a stark contrast with the rhythmic and purposeful trails imprinted by the sun's pathway through the sky. In a similar vein, the photographic renderings of families are often responses to an idealized image. Yet there is often a gap between lived reality and a perceived ideal.

Varying in species and origins, the bean plants are recurring subject matter in Chang's works as a representation of life and dormant time. The series is hence an extension of her previous explorations on adaptation and survival, into more private and intimate realms.

Talk with Lavender Chang and Michelle Ho, Gallery Director at the ADM Gallery at the School of Art, Design and Media, Nanyang Technological University. Date: 21 July 2016 | 7:30pm

The Movingly Minute Scale of a Restricted Life, Photographs by Lavender Chang


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