Memory of a Body, 2025
acrylic and mixed media on canvas,
(H) 94 × (W) 60 × (D) 5 cm
I am drawn to a particular tiger skin held in the Lee Kong Chian Museum (Singapore). Stripped of its body and fixed into symmetry, the specimen sits between presence and absence. It is an animal marked by the histories of hunting, scientific collection and national symbolism. Draped over canvases, the skin becomes a surrogate for painting itself, a surface once alive, now suspended like an image ready for display.
The Malayan tiger once inhabited the swamps and forests of Singapore before being hunted to extinction in the early twentieth century. Today, its likeness circulates widely as an emblem of pride and authority, even though the animal no longer exists in the landscape it once shaped. By returning to the museum specimen, the work reflects on how the tiger’s remains were transformed into evidence for colonial science and later absorbed into the language of national identity. The skin becomes a trace that exposes how nature is turned into symbol, property and myth.
These paintings consider what it means to depict a creature that has vanished. The blank canvas becomes a mortuary surface, and the act of painting shifts from depiction to witness. Each work holds the tension between preservation and loss, beauty and violence, image and extinction. In approaching the tiger’s skin as both artefact and threshold, the series asks how art might contend with histories that persist only in fragments, and how representation can bear the weight of what will not return.
The Malayan tiger once inhabited the swamps and forests of Singapore before being hunted to extinction in the early twentieth century. Today, its likeness circulates widely as an emblem of pride and authority, even though the animal no longer exists in the landscape it once shaped. By returning to the museum specimen, the work reflects on how the tiger’s remains were transformed into evidence for colonial science and later absorbed into the language of national identity. The skin becomes a trace that exposes how nature is turned into symbol, property and myth.
These paintings consider what it means to depict a creature that has vanished. The blank canvas becomes a mortuary surface, and the act of painting shifts from depiction to witness. Each work holds the tension between preservation and loss, beauty and violence, image and extinction. In approaching the tiger’s skin as both artefact and threshold, the series asks how art might contend with histories that persist only in fragments, and how representation can bear the weight of what will not return.