Galerie Steph is pleased to present A Survey of the Singapore Psychogeographical Society by the young yet perspicacious artist Debbie Ding. The solo presentation brings together five series of works that serve as visual documents on and reflections of the urban environment she has lived in and travelled through. The artist will be giving a talk on 7 September, 2.30 – 3.30pm.
Debbie’s interest in psychogeography has led her to investigate urban cities and its geographical environment to explore its effects on the emotions and behaviour of individuals. She renders mundane daily encounters in the city into a playful excursion – creating an opportunity to construct her own personal narratives against the anonymity that modernity often produces concomitantly. She also creates toolkits laying out psychogeoforensic techniques and methodologies for others, encouraging them to construct their own narratives too about our cityscape.
Debbie has translated some of these techniques to record more personal terrains – her dreams – which she has mapped out over the years in hand as a visual document. A committed urban dweller, her dreams have always involved buildings because she had always lived in cities. Soon after this observation, she began studying and visualising landscapes devoid of buildings hoping that the act of first mapping the oneiric terrain will materialise a dream without buildings in them.
This survey brings together for the first time five series of works in prints and ink on paper. The series includes an archive of ethnographic fragments from Sungei Road, which is undergoing vast changes from redevelopments; a data of mysterious survey monuments found within the area of Sungei Road that serves as clues; a study of invisible faultlines in Singapore, which has led her to trek on both paved and unpaved grounds; a record of dreams as topographic maps, the collection of which serves as a blueprint of her dreamscape; and a study of maps without buildings as Debbie takes her experience in the city and charts it as natural geological features.
Image: © Debbie Ding, Galerie Steph
