SIGHTLINES by Wei Leng Tay

About Michelle Wong

Michelle Wong is Researcher at Asia Art Archive, where her research focuses on histories of exchange and circulation through exhibitions and periodicals. Based in Hong Kong, her current projects include the Ha Bik Chuen Archive Project. She leads the undergraduate course developed in collaboration with Fine Arts Department, The University of Hong Kong, and “London, Asia”, a collaborative project with Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art. She independently runs the collective project Sightlines with artist Wei Leng Tay, which investigates the tension between individuals and circumstances, ideas of seeing, and relationships that mark recent lived experiences.

About Wei Leng Tay

Wei Leng Tay is an artist working with photography, audio and video that are made into installations and prints. Her process begins with conversations and interactions with people she meets, which inform the images and forms the projects take.

As she works with various parties on her projects, she reflects on the significance of this interaction for both herself and the other party, and how this relationship, however transient and brief, can be articulated in the work. Her works are usually based on how desires, personal relationships and histories are tied to family, society, and the state, and migration. They also reflect on the politics of perception and relation: Who is looking and how is one looking? What is being heard? Why does one, as viewer, maker, participant, feel certain ways about the work? In this way, the works also consider the impossibility of representation and knowing, adding another dimension to the complexities of identity and sense of place or displacement dealt with.