Kray Chen’s choreographed videos explore the coded rituals of everyday life, from conventions of dress to the way that physical gestures, once repeated, become systems. His work is characterized by these uneasy loops between control and surrender, broken only by absurdity.
Opera Green is a moving image work that unfolds across two screens, each portraying a stock character from Teochew street opera: The Scholar and The Warrior. The alternately stylized and realist performance of Nick Shen, custodian of Singapore’s oldest Teochew company, unsettles the borders between character, actor, and archetype. Accompanied by an original score by Emily Koh, Opera Green is not merely a tribute to a fading tradition—it is an exploration of how identity is rehearsed, inherited, and fractured in real time.
Optics of Image features footage cut from Opera Green and reworked into an LED display that creates a holographic effect, as if the images were suspended in mid-air. These outtakes and unscripted fragments appear as ghostly images, inviting the viewer to consider how identity and narrative is structured through omission and perception mediated by technology.
