Jeremy Lai

Materialising Memory is a process-led project that explores how memory is shaped through the act of making.

Using cyanotype photograms as a method of recording, the work shifts focus away from producing perfect images and towards engaging with time, material, and environment. Through a series of workshops, photowalks, and cyanotype experiments, the project examines how different mediums and processes influence what is noticed, captured, and remembered.

These findings develop into two outcomes: the Materialising Memory Kit, a guided cyanotype experience, and Fragments of a Familiar Space, a large-scale exhibition exploring memory through material traces found within familiar environments.

Vanished Garden is an experiential installation that aims to spark an appreciation for nationally extinct butterflies and develop public interest in Singapore’s historical biodiversity.

The interactive experience comprises eleven freestanding panels, each showing a digital rendition of a nationally extinct butterfly from the SIGNIFY archive, as an abstracted image that becomes clearer when visitors wave their hands in front of the screen.

This is surrounded by an immersive video wall created from the butterflies’ host plants, emphasising biodiversity as an interconnected ecosystem. Visitors collect species information of each nationally extinct butterfly from each panel, compiling an archive folder and exhibition catalogue of the experience.