About
Pauline is an artist trained in photography whose practice extends into installation, sculpture, ceramics and performance.
Inspired by social issues and everyday life, her work explores overlooked emotions and experiences through storytelling, observation and introspection. Through her practice, Wong challenges societal norms and invites empathy, offering nuanced perspectives on the human experience.
Her works have garnered international recognition, been exhibited globally, and featured in The Straits Times and in bus stop posters for the *SCAPE comma campaign. She has received several awards for her practice, including the Special Choice Award at the 41st Daegu International Grand Exhibition in 2021. In 2020, she won the 11th France + Singapore Photographic Arts Award and the Shooting Home Youth Awards. In 2017, she was recognised by Her World Plus in collaboration with Calvin Klein Watches and Jewellery.
The first four-parts of the series, It is what is it...?
From top left to right, then bottom left to right:
i. dear diary,,,,,,,,,
ii. In 2024,
iii. a piece of me
iv. left with you.
It is what is it...?
The things I know:
how the living go on living
and how the dead go on living with them
~ 'Life after death' by Laura Giplin
Grief is a complex, turbulent, disruptive force, one that crashes into one’s life like floodwater, leaving in its wake, pure and utter chaos. It seeps into the crevices of daily living, clinging close to the body, leaving marks that never fully fade. It is what is it…? is a series of works that slowly unfolds as a letter addressed to a deceased family member, an attempt to cope with the shadow of their passing.
This body of work functions as a personal compass for a self that feels perpetually lost. It explores the state of flux, the site of emotional turmoil—outwardly expected to appear whole, yet internally struggling with the heaviness of grief and longing.
Through a gentle exploration of this limbo, the work aims to create a space where peace and groundedness are allowed to unfold, instead of pushing towards any kind of finite resolution.
Exhibition installation view of dear diary,,,,,,,,, (2026)
Research methodology and theoretical framework
This research explores liminality as a complex stage of grief that balances loss with the need for social recovery.
It challenges the conventional idea of getting over grief by presenting personal experiences in a "waiting room", and critiques societal pressures for linear healing and the medicalisation of grief, examining cultural discourses that pathologise those remaining in an in-between state, while also analysing cultural tendencies and modern art through autoethnography.
By referencing contemporary artists who visually and performatively inhabit the liminal space, the research argues that occupying the nothingness of grievance can be a profound creative act, transforming the "waiting room" into a space of valuable, fragmented reality rather than an escape.
Nur Ashserina
October Bong Man Won
Tong Winona I
Justine Enriquez (Redd)
Kerru
Ye Min Khant
