WONG WINSOME DUMALAGAN
Continuous Portraits of Sealing
set of 7, papers, light box, 2021
‘The process of continuously destructing and sealing. The slight twinge of guilt and pleasure deriving from venting but not daring to make a single noise confronting stepping out of the room, that at least you got yourself to confront against and at the same time being careful enough not to break the surface. Once it’s time to stop, seal it and leave it somewhere.’
Continuous Portraits of Sealing is a photographic installation with 7 sets of images composed of layers of soaked, scrubbed and scratched papers of body part images stacked together. With the light source beneath the layers of papers, the scratches and imperfections on each layer added up on each other while also sealing and covering up one another at the same time.
The set of photos were taken when I was underweight and worn out, while at the same time feeling that there’s certain beauty in a worn out body. There’s this desire of venting that made me just want to take photographs of my body and with my body. In image making, I long for the direct sensation deriving from touch and the volume of the image, when image is not just a flat surface but with more volume/dimension, vulnerability, scratches, imperfection, unpredictability. The vulnerability and damages left on the paper became as important as the original image. The involvement of body and time is a ritual for me, through repeatedly involving the body, it’s a transfer of the emotion from the body to the work itself, at the same time being a burial of these emotions and past within me.