___ Was Here Solo Exhibition (26th Sept- 7th Nov 2026)
___ was here by Shen Jiaqi (b. 1989, Singapore) draws inspiration from neighbourhood playgrounds and everyday architecture, spaces that are constantly transformed through the city’s redevelopment. Through these familiar sites, Shen explores the interplay between play and memory, and our instinctive desire to hold on to places and experiences long after they have changed.
Playgrounds often sit at the heart of our shared urban spaces, where children learn to climb, fall, invent and make sense of the world around them. Russian-Soviet psychologist Lev Vygotsky (1896–1934) saw imaginative play as fundamental to a child’s psychological, social and intellectual development. Shen draws on this idea, treating play as a way of reimagining the ordinary: a slide can turn a fall into flight; a swing can make, for a fleeting moment, the sky feel within reach. In these moments, a pocket of endless possibilities in a city takes on the weight of memory, staying with us long after the sites themselves have changed or demolished.
Yet this impulse to transform is not the only thing at play here. There is a quiet stubbornness in childhood: the belief that if we hold on tightly enough, things might remain as they are — that a balloon could be made to stay, if only we cared enough. But such places are never quite permanent. As playgrounds are removed, redesigned or replaced, they come to mirror the transience of the urban landscape around them, reminding us that even the places we once thought would always be there can quietly disappear. Playground forms reappear throughout Shen’s paintings, with cradle swings, slides and merry-go-rounds rendered vividly in the colours of childhood memory. These spaces are reshaped by the way they have been remembered and experienced through play. ___ was here echoes the familiar childhood scribble: a simple yet insistent mark of presence, and a claim to having once occupied a place.
Spanning paintings and light works, the series also introduces a new body of sculptures combining reclaimed concrete from renovation and demolition sites with hand-blown glass forms inspired by childhood balloon toys. Each glass element is moulded to fit its corresponding concrete fragment like a jigsaw puzzle, an attempt to piece together places from fragmented memories.
___ was here emerges from a childhood stubbornness, approached through play rather than nostalgia. It reflects a quiet refusal to accept what lies beyond our control, becoming both a playful claim of presence and an insistence that something of a place, and of ourselves, remains even as the world around us changes.
List of works HERE
