Wei Leng Tay

Wei Leng Tay is an artist working across photography, video, and installation whose practice explores constructions of identity, memory, and history, particularly in relation to migration. Her works draw on long-term engagements with individuals, families, and communities, and often include research into photographic archives, interviews, and collaborative processes. By working at the intersection of the intimate and the structural, Tay unpacks the complexities of belonging, displacement, and the politics of representation.

Central to her practice is a sustained inquiry into the medium of photography—its materiality, modes of circulation, and communicative possibilities. Tay investigates how images are perceived, received, and interpreted, not only through what they represent but also through how they are produced, transformed, and presented. She works with a range of analogue and digital processes—from cyanotypes and film photography to smartphone images and microscopy—choosing methods specific to each project’s conceptual and narrative concerns. This deliberate engagement with technique and form allows her to explore the semiotics of the gaze, and how photographic technologies shape, limit, or expand the ways in which we encounter images today.

While her projects address broader socio-political questions, Tay’s focus often rests with the particular—foregrounding the lived experiences of individuals rather than generalised geopolitical frames. Through these specific and nuanced stories, she weaves counter-narratives that challenge dominant conceptions of nationhood, movement, and history, and bring attention to what it means to be human within shifting political and cultural contexts.

Originally trained in biology at McGill University, Tay’s early professional experience was in photojournalism, working as a photo editor and photographer for news organisations such as TIME Magazine’s Asia edition in Hong Kong. This background continues to inform her inquiry into the instrumentalisation of photography and the politics of image-making. Tay later completed her MFA at Bard College and has since developed a practice that bridges research, pedagogy, and collaboration. She was most recently a lecturer of art practice at Yale-NUS College and remains invested in teaching as a form of knowledge exchange and artistic inquiry.

Tay is also a founding member of Progressive Disintegrations (est. 2020, Singapore), a collaborative group with Chua Chye Teck, Marc Glöde, and Hilmi Johandi. The group works across artistic and curatorial practices to explore expanded formats for image-, art-, and exhibition-making.