Donna Ong

Singapore

Donna Ong is an installation artist best known for her evocative and thought-provoking environments made from furniture, found objects, and original artwork (e.g. dioramas). She has exhibited locally and internationally in well-known institutions and exhibitions and was the recipient of several important awards and scholarships, such as the Shell-NAC Scholarship, Singapore’s Young Artist Award, and the Prudential Eye award for Installation Art. Notable residencies include Arts Initiative Tokyo, Kunstlerhaus Bethanien (Berlin) and Krinzinger Projekte (Vienna). She is currently represented by FOST Gallery (Singapore) and Gallerie Krinzinger (Austria).

“Jungle Education” is an artwork collaged from vintage educational posters that focus on the iconic plants and animals typically associated with the tropical rainforest. This work reflects our ongoing cultural fascination with the tropics which have been shaped by Western cliches and conventions that often oversimplify and aestheticizes this complex ecosystem.

For centuries, Western art and education have represented the jungle as both an Edenic paradise, and an untamed foreboding wilderness, projecting fantasies and fears onto the landscape that is far removed from reality. These posters with their lush greens and vivid depictions of iconic species, are relics of these assumptions. They attempt to educate, but also perpetuate a simplified aesthetics that reduces the rainforest to visually palatable and familiar images. This curated imagery is appealing, yet it reinforces a distant idealized view that confines our view to aesthetic appeal and prevents deeper understanding.

Through collage, I layer fragments of these familiar scenes, deconstructing and reassembling them to disrupt established narratives. The resulting images are alluring, yet fragmented, echoing our fascination with the unknown, while calling attention to what we overlook: the intricate realities of these ecosystems that exist beyond beauty and order, In “Jungle Education”, I invite viewers to look past the familiar symbols of the “exotic” and to consider what lies beyond the edges of our pre-defined frame.

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