Image and Metamorphosis: A Panel with Andrew Ng, June Chua and Marla Bendini

Andrew Ng

Andrew Ng is an interdisciplinary arts practitioner, educator, and researcher exploring queer vernacular photography and pre-1990 Singapore visual culture. He is a PhD candidate at Nanyang Technological University, where he has also taught photography, and holds an MA in Performance-Making from Goldsmiths, University of London. His current research centres on queer photographic representation and the recovery of queer narratives through oral histories and personal archives. His doctoral work draws on photographs held within communities rather than institutions, including studio portraits of trans* women connected to Bugis Street and Johore Road. Alongside the thesis he is developing curatorial work that brings these collections into public view.

June Chua

June Chua founded The T Project together with her late sister, Alicia, in 2014, to meet the needs of the transgender community in Singapore. The T Project supports Singapore's transgender community by providing a holistic social service, including a temporary shelter for the homeless. In 2018, Ms Chua founded the Alicia Community Centre, Singapore’s first drop-in centre for transgender people. The Alicia Community Centre complements The T Project’s work, focusing on providing transgender youth access to social support, trans-focused information and resources. Her work has garnered the attention of many. Among other accolades, she was named the AWARE Champion for Gender Equality and Justice and the Promising Advocate of the Year by The Working Community 3. She was invited by the US Department of State to participate in their International Visitor Leadership Programme in 2018. In 2019, June was awarded the Health and well Being Hero Award by APCOM Thailand.

Marla Bendini

Marla Bendini is a cross-disciplinary trans, non-binary artist working across painting, text, sound, performance, and installation. She graduated with a BFA in Interactive Media from the School of Art, Design and Media at Nanyang Technological University in 2013, focusing on interactive video installation, film, and performance. Prior studies in painting continue to inform their visual practice. Their emotional, relational, playful, and transgressive practice engages performance, personas, myth-making, and spiritual inquiry to challenge social, cultural, and political narratives. Drawing from personal histories and archives, Marla uses storytelling in performative encounters to examine how recollection and conversation function as strategies for memory and meaning-making with her audiences. Her work investigates identity and visibility, creating spaces for empathy, joy, and community as practices of survival and belonging. Marla has exhibited and performed internationally across Asia, Europe, Australia, and the United States, and was recently featured in You Are Seen: Women's Contemporary Art Practice in Southeast Asia from the Personal Collection of Krystina Lyon.

Kathleen Ditzig

Kathleen Ditzig is Curator at National Gallery Singapore. She received a PhD from Nanyang Technological University with a dissertation titled, “Exhibiting Southeast Asia in the Cultural Cold War: Geopolitics of Regional Art Exhibitions (1940s–1980s).” She obtained her MA from the Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College.

Inspired by her experience in cultural policy, Ditzig studies modern and contemporary Southeast Asian art in relation to global histories of capitalism, technology and international relations. As a curator and researcher, she is invested in advancing and interrogating art as an exceptional site and system of speaking to power. She won an IMPART Curatorial Award in 2021. Her writing has been published by Southeast of Now (NUS Press), Journal of Social Issues in Southeast Asia (NUS Press), Afterall (University of the Arts London), post: Notes on art in a global context (MoMA), Art Agenda and Art Forum, among others.