The group exhibition presents the lens-based artwork of Susie Wong, Green Zeng and Zulkhairi Zulkiflee. It contemplates the postcolonial term ‘worlding’ coined by theorist Gayatri Spivak to describe how the colonial gaze shapes representation. In particular, this entails a process where knowledge and reality are entangled within colonial structures. Here, the title ‘worldly dis-position’ alludes to a sense of ‘deferral’ that is enacted through the prefix ‘dis’ or understood as ‘apart’.

In Susie Wong’s work, coconut trees are engaged as a recurring motif. Wong reflects on popular Western films and literature, where the tropical tree functions as a “parenthesis”. Here, these tropical markers serve as witnesses to place and story — autonomous objects that act as withdrawn viewfinders. In her book, The Idea of the Coconut, Wong quips about the island, “The island is not real. Coconut trees conjure up the paradise, the tropical, the Other.”

Displaced on a fictitious Southern Island of Singapore called Pulau Sebakau (Sebakau Island), Green Zeng proposes an imaginary narrative revolving around an exiled protagonist named PB. PB lives with a Malay community native to the island, where he reflects on his interaction with the islanders as both an Other and Othered. Zeng imagines PB through letters on postcards, writing them on photographic material belonging to the late Singaporean photographer, Teo Yen Teck. The mediation of the photos, both as lenses and
stimuli, speaks of displacement and longing that is both physical and psychological.

Zulkhairi Zulkiflee reflects on an uncanny displacement through Singapore, Michigan, a ‘ghost town’ swallowed by the dunes of Lake Michigan’s shoreline. He contemplates the placename, which is awkwardly divorced from his understanding of home. Zulkhairi attempts to trail the ‘emergence’ of Singapore as a free-floating concept while deferring any particular closure.

‘Worldly dis-position’ reflects on place, memory and identity as one entangled within a postcolonial context. The exhibition questions the inherent notion of spaces we inhabit, where positions straddle and are constantly deferred through both connection and separation with the world.

Susie Wong (b. 1956) began her artistic practice in the late 1980s as a painter and art writer, later developing curatorial projects focused on collaboration and women issues. In recent years, her work has engaged with memory and loss, documentation and nostalgia through a variety of mediums such as painting, drawing, and time-based installation. She has participated in group exhibitions at The Substation, Singapore (2016, 2010, 2008), The Esplanade, Singapore (2015, 2013); and Institute of Contemporary Arts, Singapore (2012).

Filmmaker and artist Green Zeng (b. 1972) scrutinises how history is written, interpreted, and disseminated. Focusing on issues such as student activism and the connection between archives, the state, and the individual, he reactivates fragments of the past and questions the artist’s role in “truth-telling”. His films have been presented in international festivals including the 30th Venice International Film Critics’ Week, Italy (2015) and Cannes Film Festival, France (2006) and his works have been included in group exhibitions at LASALLE’s Institute of Contemporary Arts, Singapore (2018, 2017); and Para Site, Hong Kong (2015) amongst other venues.

Zulkhairi Zulkiflee (b.1991) is an artist-curator currently based in Chicago. His lens-based artworks unpack the structures of his Malay identity in relation to local and global contexts, particularly through the racialized body as a conduit. He has shown in exhibitions like certain places, Comfort Station, Chicago (2024), United States; SG Contemporary, Gajah Gallery, Jakarta, Indonesia (2023); Der Greif: Past & Present, Munich, Germany (2023); Vantage Point Sharjah 10, Sharjah, United Arab Emirates (2022) and Expo 2020, The Singapore Pavilion, Dubai, United Arab Emirates (2022). He is currently an MFA candidate at the University of Illinois Chicago with a
Fulbright study grant.

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Tags: Chciago, Faheem Majeed, Green Zeng, Susie Wong, West Town, Zulkhairi Zulkiflee