Ow Yeong Li Wen
About
Li Wen is a multidisciplinary artist specialising in oil and watercolour painting. Her practice explores how images function in contemporary visual culture, particularly how digital images shape the way people see the world, communicate with one another and develop humour and a shared language between peers.
Li Wen is deeply interested in how images impact individuals on a personal level as well as how they circulate and evolve collectively online. Much of her work involves translating low-resolution, fast-moving digital images—such as memes and reaction images—into painting. By slowing them down and recontextualising them, she creates space for reflection while exploring the tension between digital immediacy and material labour. She is also interested in how meaning shifts when imagery moves from a shared online context into a more individual, physical one.
More recently, Li Wen's practice has expanded into ideas of spectacle and attention, examining how people interact with images, contribute to them, extend their lifespan and how value is constructed through visibility and circulation.
Li Wen has been working as a freelance artist and art educator for the past seven years, and her practice continues to evolve alongside changing modes of image engagement.
the poor image(one) & the poor image(two)
the poor image is a two-part body of work exploring how images function as communication within contemporary visual culture, shaped by circulation, attention and social interaction.
the poor image(one) focuses on reaction images sourced from platforms such as TikTok, where users increasingly communicate through images rather than text. These low-resolution, rapidly circulating visuals act as an emotional shorthand. By translating them into painting, the work recontextualises fleeting digital exchanges into a slower, material form, highlighting tensions between immediacy and duration.
the poor image(two) shifts to a public spectacle, using a Lamborghini as both the subject and the site. As it is photographed and shared, the car becomes an image shaped by visibility and circulation.
Together, the works examine how meaning and value are produced not through origin or quality, but through movement, engagement and exchange.
Wang Runxin
Aleisha Binte Abdul Rahim
Sonya M Pillay
Natalie Savann Oh
Ye Min Khant
Yuni Sara Binte Hussaini
