Wishful Images: When Microhistories Take Form explores the impact of contemporary geopolitical realities recapitulated under the Asian Cold War through a re-historicisation of the past into the present.

Together with five artists whose artistic practices question the governmentality between the lived and the non-living — Lucy Davis, Kao Chung-Li, Kuniyoshi Kazuo, Nguyễn Trinh Thi, and Aya Rodriguez-Izumi — Wishful Images resembles a collective attempt to relate lesser-known historical events through the persistent efforts of artists, recounted and re-articulated in various forms and mediums.

Featuring artist films, experimental animations, photographs, prints, audio, and archival documents, each artistic inquiry illuminates how Cold War politics materialise as aesthetic processes under their respective geopolitical conditions. Taking its cue from Ernst Bloch’s concept of wishful images, the exhibition examines a constellation of unrealised possibilities, in which history, images, and politics triangulate.

Gallery impression of Wishful Images. Image courtesy of NUS Museum.