This space features Etymologies, a sculptural installation by Singaporean artist Donna Ong, known for her poetic spatial compositions that blur the lines between memory and imagination, fiction and reality.

Drawing from architecture, fine art, and literary narrative, Ong stages her works like theatrical scenes—carefully arranging objects and visual elements to draw viewers into immersive, narrative-rich environments.

In Etymologies, the artist reinterprets the spatial sensibility of traditional East Asian ink landscapes through contemporary installation and moving image. Under the conceptual frame of “etymology,” she explores the origins, mutations, and layered meanings of visual imagery in cultural contexts.

Within transparent acrylic boxes, layers of film images are meticulously stacked to form what at a distance resembles a classical ink landscape. Yet as viewers shift their gaze and position, the scenery subtly transforms—becoming fluid, unstable, and alive.

This effect reimagines the three perspectives of East Asian landscape painting—high distance, deep distance, and level distance—not as fixed modes of seeing, but as temporal and spatial flows. The air between each film layer functions like the negative space in ink painting, allowing light to animate the composition.

Here, qi yun sheng dong—the “spirit resonance” of life—is no longer conveyed through ink and brush, but through light, translucency, and space.

The “cave” that emerges in the work serves as both the cradle of civilization and a symbolic site where illusion and reality converge. It also alludes to the layered identity of Singapore as a multicultural city-state—where myth, memory, and modernity coexist.

Within the theme of this Biennale, Neighbors of Civilization – Somewhere over the Yellow Sea, Ong’s work articulates the quiet depths of intra-Asian memory and cultural complexity.

Etymologies is not a work to simply behold—it is a landscape that must be thought through, navigated, and assembled by the viewer.