In Particulate, the artist harnesses rust as a barometer of time. She ‘paints’ scenes of shanshui via alchemical reactions between the air and oxidising solutions applied to copper sheets. Both serendipity and artistic intervention steer the works, allowing for the invisible energy of metal, moisture in the air, and time to react and become interwoven as means of ‘painting.’

The series began as her way of surrendering to the high humidity in her native Singapore, as she gives form to the hot, sticky air we don’t see yet feel so strongly.

Borrowing from tenets of traditional shanshui painting, the work subscribes to nature’s rhythms and the co-existence between man and nature. And just as how shanshui paintings imagine ethereal landscapes out of the realm of nothingness, these works tease out that liminal space between what is there and what is perceived.