FALSE TRUTHS, 2020

False Truths (2020) grows from Yanyun Chen’s previous exhibitions Flower Flights (2018) and 追花 Chasing Flowers (2016) retaining the classical charcoal aesthetics of her past works. However, what has infiltrated are artificial plastic and silk flowers,  fake flowers that will be not die, mingling with the withering real flowers in this drawing. It asks the viewer to consider the difficulties in defining truth from fiction, fact from representation, in response to the passing of the Protection from Online Falsehoods and Manipulation Bill (POFMA) in Singapore on 8th of May, 2019. This bill was passed to  tackle deliberate online falsehoods and to promote transparency, allowing any Minister to instruct Competent Authority to issue a Direction on any false statement of fact made on a person, whether the person is in or outside of Singapore. With this in mind, one recalls the Liar’s Paradox, where the statement “I am lying” serves to be both true if the liar is indeed lying, and false for the liar just lied; if a false sentence is true, the sentence is false, and thus also true. If a person is capable of claiming a statement delivered as false or true, this statement must be beyond any form of representation—image, text—and beyond writing, reading, seeing, perceiving.

a statement of fact is a statement which a reasonable person seeing, hearing or otherwise perceiving it would consider to be a representation of fact; and(b)a statement is false if it is false or misleading, whether wholly or in part, and whether on its own or in the context in which it appears.

The  works chase their artificiality into the digital realm. In a collaboration with visual effects and CG specialist Alex Scollay, Chen expands her practice into prints and animation by creating CG models of flowers, tapping into AI technology and applying neuralstyle transfer for the rendered images to mimic the style of her drawings.

If prints and drawings can be discussed as “originals” or “real”, then pushing the notion to the limits lands the work in a virtual space. Using computer generated flowers floating in zero gravity, Scollay and Chen film flower models within a VR headset, leading to a mesmerising dreamscape.

False Truths was presented by Art Porters Gallery, at the SEA FOCUS 2020 Art Fair in Singapore, from 15th to 19th January 2020. The video “The Truth lies in Fact” from False Truths (2020) was also presented at Mirazur x The Mandala Club in 2021.