afterimage
Arundhati Kartik, Cavin Lim, Ryan Lim Zi Yi, and Joel Seow
Curated by Stephanie Jaina Chia and Yu Ke Dong
Group Exhibition
8 – 17 May 2026, 11am – 7pm
"there is no future in nostalgia"
& certainly no nostalgia in the future of the past.
now, the corner cigarette-seller is gone, is perhaps dead.
no, definitely dead, he would not otherwise have gone.
he is replaced by a stamp-machine,
the old cook by a pressure-cooker,
the old trishaw-rider’s stand by a fire hydrant,
the washer-woman by a spin-dryer
& it goes on in various variations & permutations.
there is no future in nostalgia.
- Arthur Yap
Inspired by Arthur Yap’s poem "there is no future in nostalgia", this exhibition reflects on the cycles of urban change in Singapore and the memories that persist in their wake. As familiar spaces disappear through redevelopment, they continue to exist in recollection, archives, and artistic interpretation.
The exhibition explores the concept of the “afterimage” — the lingering impressions that remain after a moment or place has passed. Through photography, installation, and light-based processes, the participating artists consider how everyday encounters with the built environment shape personal and collective memory.
The works respond to urban transformation through gestures of remembrance, observation, and reflection. Using materials and techniques that emphasise light, ephemerality, and trace, the artists examine the shifting boundary between physical space and memory. Together, the exhibition invites viewers to consider how moments of intimacy with the city endure even as its landscapes continue to change.
About the Artist(s)
Arundhati Kartik is an interdisciplinary artist whose practice encompasses drawing, light and projected media, through which she explores the phenomenological effects of light in flux. Engineering projections on a variety of surfaces, Kartik’s installations transform everyday windows into ephemeral portals that blink, shift and fade as the viewer draws near. Oscillating between presence and absence, these works evoke a lingering feeling of elusive desire, gravitating toward that which they can never possess.
Cavin Lim is a Singaporean lens-based media artist working primarily with photography and video as reflective tools for exploring emotion and fragmentation. Through documenting personal and everyday encounters, his practice considers how lived experiences accumulate and reshape themselves over time, attaching themselves to places that are likewise temporal. Drawing from old family videos, the artist inscribes these images -- via cyanotype printmaking and stop-motion animation -- onto paper, transforming them into repositories of fading memories.
Ryan Lim Zi Yi is an artist based in Singapore whose practice revolve around quotidian occurrences. Dissolving the boundary between the public and the private, Lim embodies the eye of a roving voyeur, capturing fleeting interactions that go unnoticed and unremembered. In a city that eschews sentimentality, Lim’s endeavours remind us of the subversive power of remembrance.
Joel Seow is best described as a painter of hazy memories and indistinct images. Collaging industrial materials, text and human bodies, his paintings hover in between visibility and invisibility, recording what eyes cannot apprehend -- the ravages of time. In attempting to decipher the painting, the viewer becomes implicated in an act of desperate recollection, grasping for objects of beings that no longer exist anywhere but in the hazy depths of human memory.
Stephanie Jaina Chia is a Singapore-based filmmaker, writer, and curator. Having graduated with a double major in BA (Hons) English Literature and Art History at Nanyang Technological University, Steph’s diverse practice surrounds metaphysical explorations of time, memory and loss. Additionally, she is interested in the capacity for film to bridge cultural divides and empower marginalised voices, undertaking her own filmmaking projects as well as programming endeavours with her collective Poster Room.
Yu Ke Dong is a Singapore-based curator, art writer and researcher specialising in contemporary Southeast Asian art. Recently graduated with a double major in BA (Hons) English Literature and Art History at Nanyang Technological University, Ke Dong has nurtured his practice through arts-related roles in Singapore, Penang, Kyoto, Venice, and New York City. His research and curatorial interests lie in the intersections of community practice, decolonial politics, and transformative justice.