Mokspace is thrilled to announce the opening of a new exhibition – Archipalagic Memory – a group exhibition of five powerful international photographers: Kurt Tong, Moe Suzuki, Shinwook Kim, Yiyoung Song, and Robert Zhao Renhui.
All exhibiting artists, in their work, explore memory as fragmented, embodied, and resonant — an archipelago adrift on shared seas of emotion.
Song Yiyoung’s Bird of Paradise: 夜鳥譚 (Night Bird’s Tale) (2023-)
Drawing on the Korean concept of Han—a deep emotional scar carried in silence—Song’s work delicately maps the expansion of personal sorrow into collective affect. Referencing traditional sijo poetry and its use of birds as metaphors for waiting and longing, her installations and photographs inhabit the non-verbal spaces of grief, giving voice to that which cannot be fully said.
Shinwook Kim’s Treasure Island: Haunting Specters (2022-2023)
Travelling through the East Sea, Ulleungdo, Jeju, Tsushima, and the southern coasts of Korea and Japan, Kim’s work traces the ghosts of the Russo-Japanese War, the Pacific War, and the rumours of buried treasure and forgotten conspiracies. His images summon colonial and capitalist spectres, not merely as documentation, but as haunted remains that persist through rumour, concealment, and debris.
Moe Suzuki – another04 (2020)
Following the gradual loss of her father’s eyesight, Suzuki’s project explores the fragile threshold between sensory perception and memory. Through photography, she navigates the dissonance of visual distortion, family albums, and layered time—tracing the outlines of what slips away, gently mapping the distance between seeing and remembering.
Kurt Tong’s Dear Franklin (2018-2022)
This work begins with the chance discovery of a stranger’s personal belongings. It reconstructs the life of Franklin Lung, who journeyed through the political maelstrom of modern China from 1930s Shanghai. The piece becomes a fragmentary people’s history—an entanglement of empire, exile, love, and rupture—casting shadows of a lost community through an unnamed inheritance.
Robert Zhao Renhui – 5 Albizia (2023)
Focusing on the Falcataria moluccana (Albizia), an alien species introduced to Singapore from Java in 1871, Zhao examines the paradox of growth and rejection. Once welcomed for its shade and rapid growth, the tree is now labeled as invasive. Zhao returns to its native Maluku Islands in Indonesia to observe its presence as a native species, contrasting this with its contentious status in Singapore. The work questions ecological identity, the shifting perception of nature, and the blurred boundaries of memory and place.