Enmoving by Ng Hui Hsien [2020]

[02.12.2020 — 20.01.2021]

Enmoving features a series of unique silver gelatin prints created by Ng Hui Hsien with improvisational techniques in the darkroom, using found organic matter such as rocks, roots and earth, Ng Hui Hsien bypasses normative lens-based methods of creating images, preferring itself the direct, indexical quality of the photogram, creating images by placing the organic material directly on or close to the photo paper itself. These images bear the shadows, shapes and silhouettes of the materials that rest above them, but for Hui Hsien these organic matter are themselves vibrant media themselves of our movement into a wider, boundless interiority. Referencing cosmological events and geological phenomena, her images suggest the presence of larger forces beyond our individual bodies and lifetimes that can be intuited with deepening nonverbal quietude. To enmove is to move inwardly, and to move at the speed and arc of feeling and nonphysical sensation. Installed with a particular sensitivity to the changing conditions of natural light in the Grey Projects gallery, Enmoving is an invitation to reflect on the connections between human and non-human spatialities, and between one person and another. Grounded in the materiality of the mundane, these prints are as much about the rich visual surface of the silver and the interiority of the image-world that is depicted, becoming sites through which Hui Hsien probes the limits of our consciousness and the interconnectivity of our para- and ur-linguistic awareness. 

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Ng Hui Hsien is an artist, writer and researcher. Her art practice uses photography as a medium to explore themes such as consciousness, the nature of reality, (im)materiality and interconnectivity; they are sites where the unconscious can find expression, indirectly or otherwise.

Hui Hsien’s work has been internationally exhibited in various institutions and festivals, including the Martin Parr Foundation (UK), Objectifs Centre of Photography and Film (Singapore), Photo Bangkok (Thailand), Obscura Photography Festival (Malaysia), Dali International Photography Festival (China), Athens Photo Festival (Greece), ZK/U Berlin (Germany) and Tokyo Art Book Fair (Japan), and a solo exhibition at the Reykjavík Museum of Photography (Iceland).  Additionally, she has been featured on platforms such as Photomonitor, PHmuseum, Paper Journal, Splash & Grab, The Reykjavík Grapevine, Photo District News, Plural, Fraction Magazine, dienacht, Fisheye Magazine, Emerging Photographer and Invisible Photographer Asia (IPA).

 Hui Hsien’s self-published, limited-edition, hand-stitched artist book – The Weight of Air – is distributed by Reminders Photography Stronghold (Japan). The Weight of Air is also in both public and private collections including the New York Public Library (United States), Hellenic Centre for Photography (Greece), Asia Pacific Photobook Archive (Australia) and is one of the featured books in How We See: Photobooks by Women (10×10 Photobooks, 2018).

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Enmoving is a part of Grey Projects’ programmes under the ‘Proposal for Novel Ways of Being’ initiative.