STPI – Creative Workshop & Gallery

Safe Entry V.2.5

Artist Profile

In 2019, the Singapore Art Museum (SAM) closed for renovations. During Singapore’s 2020 Circuit Breaker, the museum turned the hoardings that covered its construction into a commissioning space and approached Chong to develop an artwork specifically for this space. One of the two works that Chong developed was Safe Entry (2020) – enlarged repetitive black and white QR codes that spanned the entire perimeter around SAM, and along Bras Basah Road.

While this artwork recalled the QR codes of the SafeEntry programme, it did not lead to the national registration system. Rather, it lead to an hour-long video of a walk that Chong took at Changi Airport Terminal 2 on YouTube as part of the series Ambient Walking.

Translating the QR Code onto the canvas, Chong’s Safe Entry paintings gesture at the corporeal nature of the SafeEntry programme as an invisible interface. Interacting with the painted surface becomes a way for us to touch the world captured in Chong’s video at a time when physical contact is advised against.

For other works by Heman Chong please visit: https://pubhtml5.com/umoh/qosp