Reach for Freedom: Works by Chng Seok Tin

A face twists in pain, a figure leaps through a maelstrom, and a pair of hands reaches towards the sky:

Not Gallery presents Reach for Freedom: Works by Chng Seok Tin, an exhibition of 12 stirring print and mixed media artworks by the Cultural Medallion winner.

Throughout her career, Chng produced art rich in symbolism and spanning diverse mediums from print to sculpture—creating, as curator Constance Sheares once wrote, “in the area between abstraction and figuration.” Rather than depicting external appearances, her works represent the unseen world of thought and feeling.

Across Chng’s oeuvre, two key threads occur and recur: suffering and freedom. Resonating through the personal, political, and universal realms, these contrasting themes reflect Chng’s own life as well as her investment in social issues of her time.

One of Chng’s deepest artistic preoccupations was the downtrodden condition of man, particularly in a modern, urban society. Plagued by materialism and competition, alienated from nature and crowded into cities, humanity seemed to be undergoing a kind of death of the soul.