In Conversations With
Photography by Jasbir John Singh
There are moments when art ceases to be a product and becomes a presence—when the self, the space, and the materials converge in a kind of reverent listening.
This photo series, created in collaboration with Singaporean photographer Jasbir John Singh, captures such a moment. Known for his compassionate lens and social documentary work, Jasbir invited me into a rare kind of creative freedom: to do anything I wanted in front of the camera. What unfolded was an embodied conversation—not only between artist and photographer, but between ink and paper, gesture and silence, body and breath.
With kraft paper unfurled like an altar, Chinese ink in hand, and the wide flat brush I always return to, I let the body speak. Dragging, smearing, splattering—each movement a wordless prayer. The ink moved as if it had memory, the paper absorbing what words could not hold. I entered a state of flow so complete, it felt like slipping beneath language into something older.
Here, the artwork was not the end, but the living thing that arose in the midst of making. As art therapist Joy Schaverien once described, the image held a life within it—not in its final form, but in the sacred unfolding.
This series is a love letter to collaboration, to trust, and to the kind of magic that can only arise when two artists meet one another not in performance, but in presence.
