Kar-men Cheng

Kar-men’s art is informed by her research background in education sociology, and intimately intertwined with personal histories which she seeks to understand. She is intrigued by the power of roleplay to create new realities, through its facilitation of different contexts, unexpected biases, and momentary alliances. Her work often begins with social relations as material and transforms into whatever medium feels right. Recently, she has been focusing on the libidinal dynamics of familial relations, examining her own home and its relationship to wider societal structures and geopolitical tensions.

Relevant projects include “Shopping for Culture in a Single-owner Society”, a chapter in The Singapore Mall Generation (2022); Native Seed Network (2021), an open platform to exchange seeds and stories across borders, developed alongside interdisciplinary art practitioners Michelle Lam and Chloe Chotrani, and supported by Goethe Institut Singapore; and “The Social and Cultural Capital of Singapore’s Independent Electronic Music Scenes” (2018), a year-long independent research study, supported by the National Arts Council of Singapore.

Past residencies include dblspace 2022, Lasalle X Platform Exchange 2021, 405 Residency 2021, Ideascity 2020, and Tropical Lab 2019. She has shown work in Galeri Katamsi, Yogyakarta (2019), Sesama, Yogyakarta (2019), and Starch, Singapore (2021). She has also been a part of the online shows: In Spite Of… (2020), curated by Milenko Prvacki, Yeo Workshop’s Art X Action (2020), and Bulanujung (2021), curated by Jeremy Sharma.

Outside her art practice she is a copywriter and freelance researcher. She regularly writes articles and develops reports for 3Pumpkins, a community art and social development organisation based in Singapore.

Kar-men is Writer-in-residence for our 2022 Hi-Viz Satellites.