Taiwanese artist Tsai Charwei’s practice is largely influenced by Buddhist philosophy. Some of her most seminal works involve working with organic and perishable materials such as lotus leaves, mushrooms, tofu, and incense, and this follows the artist’s interest in realising the philosophical concepts of emptiness, in tangible yet temporal forms. By working with ephemeral material, the mutable nature of her work is subject to decay and dissolution, and resists permanent form, highlighting the nature of change as an enduring constant.

Baptism, which was filmed at the Medieval medieval church of Saint Severin in Paris, France, features a close-up video of the Christian rite frequently performed on young children as a ritual of joining the faith. In this initiation tradition, Tsai presents what she calls a “reverse baptism”, where it is the hands of a child cleansing her mother’s hands, rather than that of a parent or an elder blessing the child. 

Dinh Q Le's Scroll series appropriates of iconic images of the Vietnam War as the titles reveal: Thich Quang Duc, the burning monk, Phan Thi Kim Phuc, the napalm girl, and the victims of the killings at Mai Lai. Capitalising on the abilities of digital photographic technologies, Le stretched the three images using image-editing software and printed them onto 50-metre long scrolls on photographic paper. The content of the original photographs and any discernible signifiers are lost as the images disintegrate into abstract indexical signs imprinted on the folded paper, forbidding us yet again another entry into the totality of the printed image. 

This series encapsulates Le's continuous artistic exploration of the materiality of photographic images, following his well-known photo-weaving series that also fused documentary images from the Vietnam War. It also makes a strong proposition about the ways technology has influenced our collective memory and our perception of global politics.

Alluding to Henri Matisse’s gouaches découpés, the unexpectedly rich orange colours of the bodily abstract forms in this series are choreographed against a brilliant, placeless blue background. However, unlike the famous paper cut-outs, the embraced and embracing figures are not imagined: they have an indexical nature, having been extracted from original photographs circulated on social media platforms, which Yee sourced via her own network of family, friends and acquaintances. 

The abstract configurations stand for what the artist explains is the “experience of domination and indignity between the West Malayan on the peninsula over the marginalised East Malayan in Borneo”, where she is originally from. They aim to remind us that domination is always the politicians’ remit played against ordinary people’s empathy and compassion, as manifested in the act of embracement, physical and metaphorical. James C. Scott coined the term of “hidden transcript”, for “off stage” political discourse and action (such as gossip, mocking, the joke, and vengeful tones) beyond the intimidating gaze of power. The hidden transcript is illustrated here through a visually enticing language that allows the politics of the body to demystify the structures of power and assume a new form of resistance. Yee sees this series as a form of visual incantation that she recites during her engagement in political street demonstrations in Malaysia, hoping that The Sun will rise in the East and deliver us from this long night.