Matching the Light

Greetings from the blessed month of Ramadan, dear friends. May our hearts be as steadfast as the moon, guiding our paths to peace within, and without.

Big update up front: you're invited to Portal Party this weekend, 7 & 8 March 2025, in Port Dickson! We rented a house next to our favorite beach for it.

Zedeck and I spent the afternoon on said beach, re-pasting posters of the two trees which we had put up last October. They've faded a bit, some were torn and weathered, but considering months of wind, rain, and sun, most of them have held up nicely!

The 2024 Asian Art Biennial ended last week at the National Taiwan Museum of Fine Arts in Taichung. One gateway closes, another opens: part of the celebrations this weekend will be a "Portal" ceremony, on the beach.

Some coverage of the Biennial in Art Asia Pacific, Ocula, Art in Culture, Tokyo Art Beat, and Koha Taiwan.

"Clothes are my armor for living a bold life."

I had a great time being on a panel discussion at the PROCESS Vol.3 Launch. There was a DJ, evening falling against the floor-to-ceiling glass windows, and hot people in cool clothes. Sometimes I miss the city. Long live magazines!

Some of my earlier works (2007 - 2013) are part of Strategies of Dissent: Works from the Collection of Ng Sek San, ongoing at +n UR-MU in Kuala Lumpur.

Now on to the Signal: we're going behind the lens with the person who's been taking all the photos for my recent projects, "Portal" and "Creatures on the Move".

"Unified through light and time": Grace Wong on how she finds the picture

Sharon Chin
Grace Wong

1. One of the earliest pictures I have of the two trees is the one where they’re reflected in your sunglasses. It was sunset, and my camera roll says July 2020. We were sitting on the ledge with our feet dangling above the water at high tide. What memories or impressions do you have about this place? 

It’s peaceful and homey, with regulars who swim, walk and linger. The constant presence of huge ships is striking… and grounding, in the sense that although it’s a beach, it’s not an escape in that way. I remember walking to the abandoned building by the coast that one time. Hanging out with you and Zedeck and seeing clearly your relationship with this place. Shooting the shit with feet dangling at different points in time; moving rocks to your tree; spending time during I Like This Place, and getting away from the city after a long time in lockdown.

2. You’ve worked in media, and are also a trained make-up artist - professions that are all about image-making. What’s your relationship to cameras, and photographs? Do you think of yourself as a photographer at all?

Not at all. That would require more from me: skills, studying and doing. I have cameras and sometimes, an impulse to record. My dad has loved photography since his youth, so I grew up around it, had a lot of pictures taken of me as a kid and was gifted a little compact that I loved, so the appeal for sure began there.The first time I took photos for work was in the fashion blog times when I was sent to photograph street style at parties, concerts, and one BERSIH rally. Remember those? I will never not have Media Brain when it comes to thinking about images, but these days I relate to photos mostly in makeup work–all makeup that is paid for is meant to be photographed, so that’s a major consideration.

3. You’re credited as the photographer on “Portal” (and “Creatures on the Move”), but you were also involved in the production process. Can you talk about some of the crafty things you were drafted into doing? Did this affect how you approached taking the pictures? 

I got to work on cleaning out the bottles, distributing the little red rocks, attaching the components for holding the wick and gluing the paper for the wheatpasting, so I could, at various points, see the materials and think about how they would look in the setting and what the pictures might be. It’s also just mega gratifying to get involved and see it come together.

4. Let’s talk gear! What camera(s) do you use? And what’s the story behind them? 

I used a Ricoh GRIIIx, a compact camera most known for being expensive, hypey gear for street photography. It’s the first camera I bought for myself since I've been lucky to borrow from dad before this. Honestly, it’s a bit limiting because of the fixed focal length but I like it because whenever I can, like in this project, it generally feels good for me to move around to try and find the picture.

5. We did two sessions - day shots of Zedeck and I wheatpasting on the beach, and night shots of us lighting the lamps around the leftover roots where the trees used to be.  What were some thoughts or experiences you had while being on the beach during these sessions? 

First thing that comes to mind is that the day session was so exceedingly hot the camera overheated a bunch of times. In my mind, I think the uncle we met, the one who loves Port Dickson yet has the opinion young people should leave the country really did the thing to galvanise that moment, the sense of what you were doing, this keen looking and recording of the patch of land you both care about. And then in the night session, we met someone else on the same beach, someone finding solace and friendship. The urgency of that evening made it stressful to even imagine a side chat, but it became key to the feeling of the session and the resulting photos of him and Zedeck together are some of my favourites.

6. I’ve been thinking about your observation that the lighting in photos of the trees that we wheatpasted (taken on my iphone over the course of a few years), matched the lighting on the beach while you photographed us doing the wheatpasting. You said that it felt extremely satisfying, or ‘shiok’. Can you say why? 

Oh yeah, very satisfying. The thinking was that the "Creatures on the Move" images were shown indoors under artificial lighting, and this time, not only was this set pasted outside, they were just a few meters away from where the trees were, in the same actual sunlight. So whether you’re in PD and you see it in person or if you’re at the show looking at this picture within a picture, what you are seeing is visually unified through light and time, exactly like a portal!

7. What’s next for you? Are there dream project(s) you would like to work on?

[This February] I’m going to Tokyo to do makeup in a hair competition for our friend Boon. I’m excited–it’s a brilliant opportunity and hair comp energy is like nothing else. For dreams, I want to do makeup for music videos, I want to do a photo thing, and I want to write again.

Grace Wong is a make-up artist, media worker and occasional photographer.

This has been Signal 008, thanks for being here. Did you know if you subscribe to Smoke Signals, a magic portal opens up in your inbox once every few weeks, which you can jump in and who knows where you'll end up? 🕳️🐇

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This is where I leave you cool links:

'In times of crisis, what do you hold sacred?' - we asked 16 artists across Malaysia, Thailand, the UK and the US to respond to this question, and the result is Shrineshare! We'll be showing the project at Portal Party. Come see it in person, or check out the digital version here.

Rupa Subramaniam's web-exhibition Butterflying the Highway is an immersive trek through sketchbooks and road footage. Being ambitious in the work always pays off. Trip worth taking!

Doom: The Art Experience. Your gun is a glass of wine, and you wander around galleries picking up pieces of cheese lolllll

Whose Ramayana is it Anyway? Immediately placed an order for this book after I read the interview with author Natasha Sakar.

Still time to catch Boom Boom Bang: Play & Paradoy 1990s K.L. at Ilham Gallery until this weekend. I have alot of thoughts on this show and the ways it communicates (and doesn't) to the present day. Briefly:

• Ismail Zain's digital collages read as timeless as any pioneer oil painting, and as meme-able as any gif on reddit. Was it necessary to display the antique Macintosh and bitmap printer they were made on?
• On reflex, I tried to click out of Niranjan Rajah's Duchampian browser artwork and surf the internet, which crashed the system. A gallery minder had to restart it by turning the power off and on.
• The stab of recognition when I saw Chuah Chong Yong's installation of urban columns with their pilings exposed, bags of stuff piled at their base. The city skyline may be unrecognizable year-to-year, but those who live and move on the streets remember the truth, and sometimes, so does the art in the galleries.