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Isabella Teng


How to Touch a Memory (2022)

charcoal on postcard-sized paper, set of 20

Drawings in charcoal can be held stable for a time with fixative spray. Can the same be said for memories? Or are they more mutable, changing a little with each revisit, each rememberance? In How to Touch a Memory (2022), the twenty travel postcard-sized drawings are inspired by scenes the artist encountered on her solo trip to Kuching, Sarawak.
Half of the scenes were captured with a miniature palm-sized camera. Revisiting these split-second moments in full, each drawing wonders about the curious attempt to remember anew, and to be absorbed presently in a moment from the past.





Isabella Teng Yen Lin is an artist working in the areas of drawing, painting and public installation. Her works examine the nature of perception through the intersection of line, space, text and illusion, and explore how perceptual shifts may be made possible through art.