Born and raised in Singapore where there’s no real change in temperature or daylight between the seasons, artist Dawn Ng aims to make the passage of time more visible. She uses melting ice, pigments, photography, and film to explore gradual transformation and the impermanence of life.
Ng’s striking Into Air series, created between 2017 and 2023, features large sculptural blocks of ice layered with sand and colorful pigments. As the ice gradually melted, its physical form disappeared, leaving behind traces of color. Ng documented this fleeting process through photos and film, capturing the sculptures at different stages of their transformation.
During Ng’s solo exhibition The Earth Laughs at Flowers, these photos of the changing ice blocks are displayed in lightboxes, illuminated from behind to reveal three distinct moments in the melting process: before, during, and after. Together, they capture the ice as it moves through different states, creating a stunning visual record of time.
Continuing to explore the transition from one form to another, Ng created a new collection of 12 large-scale paintings created throughout 2025. Each work began with similar blocks of ice and pigment, which were broken over a wooden panel and allowed to melt. As the ice dissolved, it left pigments across the surface, creating mesmerizing cascades of color that resemble riverbeds, coastlines, and geological formations.
Each work records the colors, shapes, and forms that capture Ng’s attention during a particular month of 2025, transforming her fleeting personal experiences into something more permanent. During the exhibition, the vivid paintings are displayed against a backdrop of deep darkness, allowing their vibrant colors to stand out like galaxies suspended in the cosmos.
“When human beings consider the earth in relation to time, we think we own it. We divide land, we parcel it, we sell it, we maximize its productivity and value,” says Ng in a short documentary about her work. “In the exact same way, we treat time. But ultimately the Earth has its last laugh at us because we go right back into it. It is this image of brutal beauty and the Earth having its last laugh that it spits us back out into something as innocent and defiant as glorious as a riot of flowers.”
The Earth Laughs at Flower exhibition at Gana Art Hannam in Seoul is open until September 9, 2026. Find out more on the gallery’s website.
Singapore-based artist Dawn Ng uses melting ice, pigments, photography, and film to explore gradual transformation and the impermanence of life.
Her solo exhibition, The Earth Laughs at Flower, showcases her stunning ice sculptures and paintings.
Her work captures ice as it moves through different states, creating a stunning visual record of time.
As the ice dissolves, it leaves mesmerizing cascades of color that resemble riverbeds, coastlines, and geological formations.
