Samantha Lee

self-portrait

2025

Real-time digital rendering, 180 single-channel videos, monitor display, camera 109 x 61 cm

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self-portrait is an ongoing video series that explores the tension between self-documentation and capitalism. Interrogating wellness culture, the artist films herself repetitively doing pull-ups. The footage is then transformed through a real-time generative process in TouchDesigner, collapsing each moment into a singular, evolving image.

Part body, part memory, part machine--self-portrait is a broader inquiry into how contemporary media blurs the line between self-expression and performance. Unpacking the aesthetics and narratives of online fitness culture, this piece investigates how subtle performances of happiness, control and ease become coded as benchmarks of self-worth.

self-portrait also engages themes of self-surveillance, with the artist intentionally concealing her identity in the footage as a portrait of resistance. How might the integrity of self-expression be retained in today's internet culture--do we have to render ourselves intelligible to avoid being taken out of context and recirculated? This piece explores what it means to retain individual autonomy instead of contributing towards an a monetized, collective brand.

Still in development, the work evolves through ongoing recordings and critical reflection--inviting viewers to consider the radical potential of what is left unshown.

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CollaboratorsComposition by Jing Jie Lim

This sound piece translates Morse code into MIDI-based, dystopian sonic textures. Once used to convey urgent, human-to-human messages, Morse here is stripped of context — its clarity warped by automation, timing errors, and the cold logic of musical translation.

In the shift from signal to sound, something is lost: intention, meaning, urgency. What remains is a language flattened into mood — an ambient unease where communication becomes aesthetic. The work asks: when a message is re-coded beyond recognition.

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Presentation

September 2025 (Singapore Design Week 2025)
Singapore Science Park, Singapore
REINVENTION curated by Yeo Ker Siang