Heng worked with the STPI Creative Workshop and twelve individuals of diverse backgrounds and communities to produce this truly collaborative piece that encompasses performance as well as visual elements. During her residency at STPI, Heng conducted her performance piece Let’s Chat with the collaborators. Using a treasured object or heirloom chosen by each individual as a starting point for sharing, Heng took a back seat and listened in order to build the mutual trust necessary for her participants to lower their personal barriers and perform their storytelling with the utmost honesty and vulnerability. Each individual then had the creative freedom, under Heng’s guidance and direction, to explore and reconstruct his or her memories using printing and papermaking.

The resulting prints are intensely private, personalised, yet undeniably relatable and universal, woven by the pathos of nostalgia into a tapestry of shared human experience. And for the first time in her practice, Heng pairs a QR code with each print to transport the work from the gallery space into the digital realm at the viewer’s wish. For Heng, the QR codes are an integral part of the viewer’s experience which transforms their passivity into active “participants,” as they enter and delve deeper into each storytelling experience beyond the boundaries of the physical space through short videos, interviews, and slide shows online.