Adar Ng

Inanimate objects as vessels of memory
By Alana Malika

Adar Ng, ‘The Light Bears Witness’, 2019, exhibition installation view. Image courtesy of the artist.

Adar Ng is a versatile media artist from Singapore who primarily works in photography and videography. The artist explores themes of impermanence using inanimate objects like VCR players or ancestral frames as entry points to philosophical ponderings on the transient nature of life. Through her work, Adar reminds her audience that though memories and experiences fade, there are trinkets that become metaphors of times past. 

Since graduating from the School of Art, Design & Media at Nanyang Technological University in 2018, Ng has exhibited widely showcasing her work in exhibitions at Singapore and abroad. Some exhibitions she has since participated in include THELASTMINUTESHOW, Bite/Hold/Release: The Boogeyman's Hand at Supernormal, Undescribed 4 at Deck, and the CDL Singapore Young Photographer Award. In 2020, Ng was one of eight artists-in-residence with Objectifs Centre for Photography and Film for their sixth annual Women in Film & Photography programme. She also has a few awards under her belt. She was one of the Top 10 Finalists in the Belgrade Photo Month New Talents 2019. In the same year, together with partner and fellow artist Dave Lim, she founded ‘Third Street Studio’, which offers a full suite of services to make creative video and photo works.

Adar Ng, ‘My Mom Lives in a Dying Medium’, 2019, exhibition installation view. Image courtesy of the artist.

In ‘My Mom Lives in A Dying Medium,’ Ng transferred home footage of her mother from a laptop to a VCR player, which required video data to be written and rewritten from digital to analog systems. The artist observes how the loss of quality triggers reminiscence and creates a false sense of nostalgia. The work questions how technological aesthetics affects the sentimental imprint of memory and how this impacts the legacy of generations in the future. Another installation, ‘Finitude (Numbered.)’ reinterprets the simile “moths to flames” to mean working without autonomy over our fate, destiny or mortality. Her use of time-based media elicits “existential dread” as viewers witness four light sources slowly dim, including a candle flame that flickers until oxygen in its dome runs out. Ng uses the imagery of the smoky dome and the pendulum of a hanging lamp losing momentum as an analogy to how no abundance of self-determination can erase the eventuality of death in a person’s life.

In Ng's artistic work, she expresses her interest in memory, both in its preservation and in its queries. She encapsulates the human condition through both extroverted social exchanges and introverted sentimental fixations.

Click here to read our conversation with Adar Ng.