In a series of recent drawings on display at FOST Gallery through June 26, Jimmy Ong explores imagined histories of his birthplace, Singapore, and Indonesia, his new home.The exhibition, titled “From Bukit Larangan to Borobudur,” Ong continues to explore his own fictionalized version of the life of Sir Thomas Stamford Raffles, a British statesman who was an integral part of the histories of both Singapore and Indonesia.This project, which was also the subject of “The History of Java,” his last show at FOST, comes to its peak in two works here. Although he began to draw Raffles as a canny move to cash in on the SG50 celebrations (as he said in an interview at the time, “Singapore is 50 this year. I am an opportunist”), the series has since taken a surreal turn. In “Raffles Descends The 7 (Seven) Storey Mountain,” 2016, for example, Ong draws the statesman into a scene straight from Dante’s “Purgatorio,” complete with a Stygian river of souls.Though this exhibition comes with the subtitle “Recent Drawings by Jimmy Ong,” other Raffles works in the show are actually sculptures. Ong’s “Seamstreses’ Raffleses” group consists of fabric sculptures made out of patchwork by the artist and a trio of Javanese seamstresses. For Ong, each of these works represents “the artist’s perceived torment and thus atonement of Raffles,” according to the gallery.Other drawings in the gallery represent Ong’s take on real historical events. In “Demolition of St. Andrew’s,” 2012, for example, he imagines the razing of the Singaporean cathedral in 1855 following lightning damage, in a charcoal drawing that features another unnamed British figure, perhaps a Raffles stand-in, watching the church fall.“From Bukit Larangan to Borobudur: Recent Drawings by Jimmy Ong” runs through June 26 at FOST Gallery, Singapore
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