TAN YEN PENG
Something Familiar – Västanfjället Through Xishan and Beyond

​Inspired by uncanny connections between travel photographs, childhood memories, and online archival images, Yen Peng’s works explore the resonance of "similar images," juxtaposing archival visuals that evoke a punctum beyond recognition. Drawing on Aby Warburg’s ideas of how images transcend time and space, she examines how disparate visuals converse across geography, memory, and history.

For this site-specific exhibition at Väst på fjället in Västanfjället, Bjurholm municipality, Yen Peng reflects on shared experiences of loss and replacement. Her current home in Singapore, near the Xi Shan Primary School ("West Mountain"), connects with the exhibition site through their names and histories. These connections, rooted in her childhood memories and broader histories, are expressed through paired images—distinct yet uncannily similar—that create a dialogue between distant places and invite reflection on how separate histories converge.

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Yen Peng embeds digital 'poor images'—low-resolution but accessible—into the hidden compartments of original school desks, revealed only when the surfaces are flipped open. This allows viewers to uncover and engage with these fragments of memory, rethinking the controlled access of the digital platform.

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