Artist Biography
Donna Ong (1978, born and based in Singapore) draws on historical, religious and mythological narratives to explore her interest in nature that began in childhood. Often assembled with found objects and staged in immersive settings, her mixed-media installations straddle reality and fantasy to evoke a sense of wonder towards environmental landscapes.
From undulating arrangements of glass jars to a bed of corals fashioned from metal objects like nails and thimbles, Ong’s presentations are underpinned by themes such as cultural memory, inner worlds and colonialism. Gift (2013–2018) is a series of antique ornamental boxes retrofitted with alluring, illuminated scenes of Southeast Asian flora and fauna. These miniature paper worlds, hand-cut from 18th- and 19th-century natural history illustrations, act as fictional souvenirs colonial explorers might have created to capture the sights and sentiments of their travels.
Ong obtained her BSc in Architecture from The Bartlett, University College London in 1999, her BFA from Goldsmiths College, University of London in 2003 and her MFA from LASALLE College of the Arts in 2012. Her work is held in various collections including the Singapore Art Museum.
Notable recent exhibitions include The Gift (2021), National Gallery Singapore; Blueprints for the Forest (2021), Institute of Contemporary Arts Singapore; Futures Imagined (2019), ArtScience Museum, Singapore; After Utopia (2017), Samstag Museum of Art, Adelaide; The Tree as An Art Object (2017), Wälderhaus Museum, Hamburg; Five Trees Make A Forest (2016), NUS Museum, Singapore. The artist has also participated in major international festivals including APT9 (2018), 9th Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art, Brisbane; Edge of the Wonderland (2018), 1st Thailand Biennale, Krabi; The Sharing Game (2016), 1st Kulturesymposium Weimar; For an Image, Faster than Light (2016), 1st Yinchuan Biennale; A Time for Dreams (2014), 4th Moscow International Biennale for Young Art; Fluid Zones (2009), 13th Jakarta Biennale; FOOTNOTES on Geopolitics, Market and Amnesia (2007), 2nd Moscow Biennale; and Belief (2006), 1st Singapore Biennale.
Ong had her residency at the STPI Workshop in 2008, resulting in the group exhibition BMW YAAS II: The Singapore Edition: David Chan, Donna Ong and :phunk (2009).