IVAN DAVID NG
Ivan David Ng articulates his Singaporean Hakka identity through loss and displacement, seeking out his ancestors through genetic memory using technology as “a spinal cord” to the past. Tapping into his own bodily movements, heartrate, and breath, feeding them through a generative media system, which then prints them out as materials for collage, Ng attempts to recall genetic memory and the embodied history of his ancestors, in part to reclaim the backhanded monicker, “guests,” given to them as refugees in Southern China.
Ng’s large portable fresco, Chong-Chong-Cong: Towards a Cosmology of the Worm, the Repeat and the Following,features motifs of comets, worms, moths and sojourning figures being guided into a wormhole-like structure towards an unknown destiny. The title, which invokes the ignorant mocking of Asian languages, is both an indictment and an invitation to deeper meaning. “Worm” (虫 “Chong”), which serves as a directional motif in the composition, sounds like “repeat” (重 “Chong”) in Mandarin, which also sounds like “follow” or “from” (从 “Cong”). The moth, said to appear after the passing of a family member, embodying their spirit, happens to be represented by a compound ideogram comprised of the characters for Worm (虫 “Chong”, which sounds like repeat 重 “Chong” ) and Self (我 ”Wo”) – a self shaped from the past. The fresco’s intentionally blank panels are meant to be pondered and filled in by future generations.
Ng uses limestone-based fresco painting to lend permanence to his speculative cosmology. The modular, foldable structure works against the architecture-bound tradition of fresco, exploring possibilities within this medium for mobile “guests.” The use of meteorite powder as pigment, specifically from meteorites without provenance, is purposefully chosen for its affinity to the Hakka condition, in that meteors, asteroids, and comets were also referred to as “guest stars” in ancient Chinese astronomy. Ng sees the political rhetoric surrounding the transient alien’s body as directly tied to the 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act – the first time an immigrant was referred to as “alien,” an enduring term in US immigration law. The undeniable irony of this term only adds to Ng’s project, which contemplates his reality in America as an alien guest: what if the sky could be a home away from home?
— Michiko Kubota, OSU Department of History of Art, PhD Student
EXHIBITION DOCUMENTATION BY SAM LO, OSU MFA PHOTOGRAPHY 2026