In Between Gallery: Eastern Promise
Sean Cham
Showing until spring 2025 is Sean Cham’s image, Studio (Palm), from his series, Eastern Promise.
Sean is an artist and researcher based between London and Singapore. In his artistic practice, Sean works at the intersections of photography, performance, and installation. His interdisciplinary and critical practice is concerned with histories and built environments; particularly considering ideas around authorship, contestation, archival gaps, colonial legacies, and migration.
Eastern Promise interrogates and dismantles colonial depictions of the Chinese diaspora in Southeast Asia.
The In between Gallery is supported by Photo Fringe, Spectrum Photographic and Jane & Jeremy.
About The Artist
Sean has previously exhibited at DECK, Singapore (2020, 2015), B-Part, Berlin (2020), CICA Museum, Gimpo (2018). He also participated in the Venice Architecture Biennale (2021), Addis Foto Fest (2018), and Landskrona Foto Festival (2018). He has been commissioned by M1 Singapore Fringe Festival (2019), The Future of Our Pasts Festival (2019), and NUS Centre For the Arts (2019). And he has been shortlisted for several awards, including: OD Photo Prize 2024; French + Singapore Photographic Arts Awards 2019; Invisible Photographer Asia Awards 2018; and was a nominee for World Press Photo 6×6 Global Talent.
Sean is currently completing a PhD in History of Art (2021-5), on a Collaborative Doctoral Partnership between London’s National Gallery and Birkbeck, University of London. His doctoral work focuses on museum studies, decolonisation, cultural and imperial legacies. Sean was an Associate Creative at DECK, and one of the curators for the 9th Singapore International Photography Festival.
Fabrica
40 Duke Street, Brighton
BN1 1AG
“As a Singaporean-Chinese living in London, I engage in self-portraiture, using my body to reclaim agency over my identity and confront the legacies of colonialism. Throughout history, the camera has often been wielded as a tool of violence, complicit in the perpetuation of oppressive narratives. Drawing from colonial archives, I appropriate and deconstruct these historical photographs and paintings to highlight the constructed nature of colonial imagery. Through deliberate acts of gazing back and turning away, each image challenges and defies the colonial gaze, subverting the power dynamics between those being photographed and those behind the camera. Set against the backdrop of my London apartment, these images are imbued with personal significance, incorporating props collected and created over time. This process serves not only as a means of artistic expression, but also as a way of navigating my complex identity as someone from a former colony now residing in the land of its imperial master. Through the convergence of past and present, and the blurred boundaries between personal narrative and historical archive, I hope these images prompt us to confront the pervasive legacy of colonialism embedded within our collective consciousness.”
