About
Deanna Ng is a lens-based artist and arts educator whose practice navigates the delicate intersections of memory, urban transformation and human resilience. She holds an MA in Fine Arts from LASALLE College of the Arts, University of the Arts Singapore.
Shaped by her work with Lien Foundation in 2009, where end-of-life issues left an indelible mark on her, she turns her lens inward to contemplate how grief becomes part of her and grows around longing, remembrance and the ephemerality of life.
Having exhibited extensively in Singapore and internationally, she also works on projects that examine not only her own memories and experiences but of the people and communities she meets.
Deanna’s work is featured in the book Singapore Eye – Contemporary Singapore Art (2015), as well as the Land Transport Authority’s Arts in Transit programme, where her work is showcased at Great World MRT Station along the Thomson-East Coast Line.
Trained as an educator with a Specialist Diploma in Arts Education. Deanna challenges students to discover their own voice in photography. She also believes students should practice the craft with an understanding of its artistic history.
The Moon has no home in the water
Inspired by Song Dynasty poet Su Shi’s poem, “Prelude to Water Melody (⽔调歌头)”, Ng explores growing around grief by reflecting on life's ephemerality and longing.
Over four months, Ng made still and moving images of the moon. The final image ends on 6 October 2025, the Mid-Autumn Festival, as Su Shi’s poem was written on the same occasion. The Mid-Autumn Festival is associated with family reunions in Chinese Culture. The poem is also popularised in Chinese pop music, sung by Teresa Teng and Faye Wong.
While Su Shi ponders why people have to be apart, his poem does not try to resolve his emotions; instead, it uses the waxing and waning of the moon as a metaphor for separation and reunion. The moon becomes an emblem of her grief as Ng laments for the dearly departed. Grief ebbs and flows like the moon waxes and wanes.
As Ng explored how to grow around grief in her practice, she was also enlightened by a 13th-century koan, 'No Water, No Moon', from Adachi Chiyono, a Zen Abbess. Chiyono realised the moon was still in the sky when the bottom of her bucket broke, and the reflection of the moon was no longer in the bucket.
Ng searched for an answer to her grief as she searched for the perfect full moon. It did not matter when she finally found it. Her search became her answer.
Title: The Moon has no home in the water #1
Chen Shitong
Sharon Hardjono
Caddie Aiw
Ashley Hi
Yen Melia
Yin Chua
