Beyond the Studio
Art through collaboration, participation and community.

Beyond the Studio began as a personal project for the module Social Forms of Art, guided by lecturer and award-winning artist Alecia Neo. For her first self-directed artist residency, Emma chose to work with the children she was most familiar with at PKVK Children’s Home in her hometown of Kulai, Johor, Malaysia. The experience led to Echoes of Care: Where the Heart Rides, a participatory installation that emerged from a series of creative workshops with the children.

Since then, Beyond the Studio has developed as an extension of Emma’s artistic practice and ongoing research into embodiment, memory, care, lived experience, knowledge and family traditions. It brings together socially engaged, participatory and collaborative projects initiated by Emma, alongside collaborations with communities, artists, institutions and organisations.

Echoes of Care: Where the Heart Rides

Session 1 — Storytelling Mixed-Media Drawing Workshop
September 2024

The first workshop invited the children to freely explore art materials through drawing, play and storytelling. With an emphasis on process rather than outcome, the children were encouraged to respond intuitively to prompts around “happy memories”. The session concluded with observational portraits of one another, prompting conversations about family resemblance and the people they felt connected to at home.

Session 2 — Storytelling & Clay-Making Workshop
October 2024

The second workshop invited the children to explore ideas around “feelings of care.” Through storytelling, sketching and clay-making, they reflected on personal memories and translated their experiences of love and care into shapes and objects. Beginning with shared stories and sketches, they then moulded clay objects associated with their memories, giving tangible form to the people, places and things that gave them a sense of love and care.

Session 3 — Polaroid Photography
October 2024

The third and final session invited the children to explore personal memories through Polaroid photography. Each child was given three shots to capture an object, indoor space or outdoor space that held special meaning to them. They were not required to share the stories behind their photographs, allowing each image to remain personal. Some children chose to share their stories, creating a deeper layer of connection to the images they captured.

First In Situ Exhibition @ PKVK Children’s Home and works featured on “Plain Fancy” One Night Only (ONO) Exhibition @ Winstedt Campus

October & November 2024

At the end of the workshop series, the children were invited to curate their own in situ exhibition at the children’s home. Taking ownership of the display, they creatively arranged their drawings and clay works using everyday furniture and objects from the home.

The exhibition became an opportunity for the children to share their stories, exchange thoughts about each other’s work and reflect on their creative journeys. At the close of the exhibition, they entrusted their works to Emma to be exhibited at the ONO Exhibition in Singapore, with the works returning to the children afterwards.

Chong Ai Chzer Emma (b.1988)

Echoes of Care: where the heart rides, 2024

Dimensions variable

Installation of children’s artworks and documentary video projection

Echoes of Care: Where the Heart Rides is a participatory installation that emerged from creative workshops at PKVK Children’s home, examining the embodied nature of caregiving through the children’s perspectives. Rooted in Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology, the project explores how emotions, memories, and relationships are perceived and embodied through personal narratives.

The installation is grounded in social forms of art, where collective making affirms lived experience within shared spaces. Guided prompts invited the children to reflect on love, care, happiness, and belonging, translating these abstract emotions into visual forms. This approach aligns with Nicolas Bourriaud’s concept of relational aesthetics, framing art as a space of social encounter and intersubjective exchange. Here, children articulated intangible feelings and internal landscapes through drawing, making visible the emotional labor embedded in caregiving structures.

The title, Echoes of Care: Where the Heart Rides, was inspired by Ah Bee, a young participant whose repeated drawings of cars symbolised both physical and emotional security. For Ah Bee, the car embodies movement, shelter, and connection with his father and brother. In this mobile sanctuary, he finds transient stability—a space where familial bonds momentarily anchor him. These narrative shed lights on the ways in which, in the absence of a maternal figure, non-traditional caregivers and shared spaces fill vital roles of emotional support.

The installation captures the imprints of caregiving relationships, acknowledging the unspoken yet deeply felt presence and absence of maternal bodies. Through shared visual narratives, children engaged in “empathic solidarity” (Bishop, 2006), finding connection through mutual recognition of their experiences. This installation invites viewers to witness the hidden labour of caregiving, highlighting the nuanced emotional topographies these children navigate as they forge their understanding of care, love, and resilience while confronting life’s complexities.