Cao Pengfei (Josephine)
About
Pengfei is an emerging artist based in Singapore whose practice explores vulnerability, emotional memory and the quiet process of learning to coexist with one’s emotions.
Working across acrylic painting, wool felt, fibre, and installation, she creates soft, tactile works that combine illustrated figures with hand-crafted materials. Her practice reflects a sensitivity to materiality, where the softness and handmade nature of wool felt echo the fragility and gradual formation of emotional experiences.
Pengfei's recent project focuses on the idea that everyone carries an innocent and fragile inner child. Emotional pain, avoidance, confusion and reconciliation are not isolated moments, but lifelong processes that shape how we understand ourselves. This understanding is rooted in personal experience: “I have experienced it, avoided it, paused within it, and finally learnt to sit with it.”
Pengfei's work dwells in states of uncertainty, tenderness and quiet acceptance. By combining painting and textile language, she constructs a visual environment that feels intimate, vulnerable and contemplative.
Stitching Silence
Stitching Silence explores vulnerability, emotional hurt and the gradual process of learning to coexist with one’s feelings. The project begins from the belief that everyone carries an innocent and fragile inner child, and that emotional withdrawal, avoidance and reconciliation are lifelong experiences rather than fixed stages with clear resolutions.
The work consists of two oval mixed-media pieces and a wall-based installation of smaller circular panels connected through thread and nails. A recurring faceless boy figure appears in both main works. The absence of facial features keeps the emotional state open, allowing viewers to project their own feelings and memories onto the character.
The left work presents a more closed and withdrawn condition, suggesting hurt and self-protection. The right work shifts toward a gentler state of emotional coexistence, where the figure begins to hold and remain with emotion rather than reject it.
Acrylic painting is combined with wool felt, fibre and thread in order to create a dialogue between painted atmosphere and tactile softness. The smaller circular elements extend the emotional space beyond the body, suggesting fragments of memory, suspended feeling and invisible emotional connections.
Rather than presenting healing as complete, the project focuses on quiet, unresolved and tender emotional states.
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Aiden Setiadi
Rozalita Sahetapy
Melissa Hong
Maya Ellena Binte Stephan Da Silva
Raven
Nur Syuhadah Binte Suhaimi
