A comprehensive showcase of Heman Chong’s interests in forms of knowledge and their dissemination
By Stephanie Yeap

Publishing, forms of knowledge and their dissemination take centre stage at Heman Chong’s second solo at STPI — Creative Workshop & Gallery, ‘Meditations on Shadow Libraries.’ Curated by Brian Kuan Wood, the show’s poetic title refers to traditionally online databases that house obscure or typically inaccessible knowledge. Each work on show encapsulates different forms of information—be they historical facts, literary knowledge, or lived and social experiences.

Heman Chong, ‘The Library of Unread Books’, 2016 - ongoing, exhibition view in ‘Meditations on Shadow Libraries’. Image courtesy of STPI – Creative Workshop & Gallery, Singapore.

The exhibition’s first, and strongest, section highlights Chong’s preoccupations with physical, abstract, and digital representations of literary knowledge. Consisting of unread books donated by members of the public, Chong’s iconic ‘The Library of Unread Books’ (2016 - ongoing) sits strikingly in the heart of the exhibition.

Comprising unread books donated by members of the public, the installation highlights the distribution, access, and excess of knowledge. While the works invite visitors to peruse the many stacks, it is a stark contrast to traditional libraries and how development of major knowledge systems is typically invisible and inaccessible to the wider public. To a larger extent, this notion also applies to systems of accessing knowledge. Although I had previously encountered the work at I_S_L_A_N_D_S in 2020, I do not tire of flipping through the books and immersing myself in stories and information that I might have otherwise not accessed.

Nearby, a digital screen plays ‘Oleanders’ (2024) on loop. The work is a video slideshow of photographs the artist had taken of books depicted in artworks in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum in New York while on holiday. Chong’s work takes its title from Vincent Van Gogh’s floral still life which included the novel La joie de vivre by French novelist Émile Zola.

Every photograph is an extremely close-up shot, highlighting cracked textures and paint strokes from each original artwork. The bibliophile in me enjoyed seeing Chong’s curated selection of books from historic artworks decontextualised from their original compositions. Furthermore, I see a compelling parallel when ‘Oleanders’ is installed alongside ‘The Library of Unread Books’, as both lack explicit provenance.

Heman Chong, ‘Oleanders (Film)’ (still), 2024, site specific installation utilising images from paintings in the Met, 17 minutes and 14 seconds. © Heman Chong. Image courtesy of the artist and STPI – Creative Workshop & Gallery, Singapore.

Heman Chong, ‘Meditations on Shadow Libraries’, 2024, exhibition view. Image courtesy of STPI – Creative Workshop & Gallery, Singapore.

Decked out in what looks like faded movie posters from floor to ceiling, the exhibition’s entire left wing made me think for just a moment I had stumbled into the gritty interior of an independent cinema instead. Titled ‘Works on Paper #1: Notes on Roads, Trips, and other Slips and Falls’, the site-specific installation features posters Chong made for an unrealised underground film festival utilising pirated copies of feature films. Movie buffs might recognise film stills from Wong Kar Wai’s ‘Happy Together’ and Chloe Zhao’s ‘Nomadland.’

However, the imagery was taken from the internet without any regard for copyright to reflect how they have been “recycled, redistributed, [and] reframed,” as the wall text puts it.

While conceptually fascinating, the work misses the mark for me, especially when compared to ‘Oleanders.’ ‘Oleanders’ clearly displays Chong’s process of photographing books in paintings and showcasing them without regard for authority. In contrast, ‘‘Works on Paper #1: Notes on Roads, Trips, and other Slips and Falls’ seemed like a wasted opportunity to make visible Chong’s clearly considered strategies of visual appropriation, such as the film festival’s underground nature or each image’s pirated nature.

Heman Chong, ‘Labyrinths (Libraries)’, 2022, installation view in ‘Meditations on Shadow Libraries’. Image courtesy of STPI – Creative Workshop & Gallery, Singapore.

Facing the ‘Library’ are paintings from the ‘Labyrinths (Libraries)' (2022) series. Composed of deceptively straightforward compositions of heavily textured grids and thick lines, each work is meant to echo the physical layouts and trains of thought associated with libraries. Compared to the prior two works, this series, in its abstract representation, is too opaque for my liking.

Heman Chong, ‘Georgette Chen / 41 Siglap Plain / Singapore 15 / 2024.01’, 2024, acrylic on stainless steel, 46 x 61 x 3.7cm. © Heman Chong. Image courtesy of the artist and STPI – Creative Workshop & Gallery, Singapore.

Over in the gallery’s right wing, ‘Eternal Returns’ foregrounds the lived experiences and social knowledge that is constantly lost in Singapore’s rapidly changing landscape. In particular, the work is a collection of addresses of homes that have been demolished in Singapore. Lining the walls are a series of painted stainless steel name cards, bearing the names of notable Singapore modern artists such as Jaafar Latiff, Georgette Chen, and Anthony Poon, as well as a large poster of over three hundred occupant names and addresses that the artist crowdsourced over Instagram.

Traditionally, a name card symbolises an exchange of information. In this case, personal memories of where one used to live. The artist’s public call for such information reflects a democratic opportunity for members of the public to memorialise their experiences. To me, combining both in such a meaningful, compact form encapsulates Chong’s strength in succinctly symbolising ideas of social history, personal memory, and urban development.

Created in 2023 alongside the STPI workshop, ’Bookmark (Leaves)’ continues this sense of temporality as it is a series of prints on STPI handmade paper featuring embossings of leaves. Despite the series’ subtle, understated appearance, it brims with sentimentality as the featured leaves were personally found by Chong within the pages of library books, with the artist’s first discovery made in 1984 among the pages of Richard Brightfield’s The Curse of Batterslea Hall. Furthermore, there is the curious parallel of how that copy of the novel was found in a library, which like the addresses in ‘Eternal Returns’, has since been demolished.

Soon, loud chatter and yelling began to permeate the gallery. Initially, I brushed it off as a heated personal conversation between visitors, but eventually learnt that I was watching a trainer and participant. The work ‘Memories’ is a performance centred around learning to recite a 500-word story written by the artist, which is not shared online or in print beyond the performance. Typically, the trainer will spend hours alongside the participant as the latter attempts to memorise the story and repeat it without mistakes. While I did not get to see the performance in its entirety (as the weary participant soon headed out on a lunch break), I found it eerily fitting that I witnessed the process behind ‘Memories’, as it paralleled how Chong’s practice is centred on deconstructing and highlighting methods of acquiring and sharing information.

Thought-provoking and at times challenging, I appreciated how the show questions what it means to know, possess, and circulate information. The exhibition is an excellent introduction to Chong’s investigations into the systems that control our access to knowledge and determine what we consider knowledge, as expressed across mediums such as painting, installation, and performance.

‘Meditations on Shadow Libraries’ is on view at STPI – Creative Workshop & Gallery from 17 January to 10 March 2024. Click here for more information.

This article is presented in partnership with STPI – Creative Workshop & Gallery.