In The Alchemical Interludes, Hazel Lim peels back the layers of colour to reveal an elemental world of matter, memory and meaning. At the centre of the exhibition are 118 sets of handcrafted books, each containing a poem dedicated to an element of the periodic table. Drawing inspiration from Primo Levi’s The Periodic Table, the work transforms scientific classification into a poetic archive of hidden characters, associations and possibilities.

 

Each poem reflects on the physical, chemical and symbolic properties of an element. Structured in four stanzas of eight syllables and folded into intimate paper forms, the books collectively form an elemental archive where chemistry becomes language, poetry becomes classification, and the periodic table shifts from scientific diagram to new assemblies of meaning. Here, lithium carries blackened appetites, oxygen kisses the world into gradients, and gold arrives weighted with belief, ornament, migration and desire.

 

Through this body of work, Hazel traces colour back to its material origins. Beneath every hue lies a network of elements, processes and associations: conductivity and toxicity, industry and mythology, etymology and memory. Colour is no longer treated as something simply perceived through sight, but as a convergence of material, cultural and emotional forces.

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Yet what happens when colour is removed from the certainty of vision? What remains of red without red, or blue without blue? Is colour still colour when it is felt as heat, heard as rhythm, remembered as danger, coded as technology, or inherited as a symbol?

 

From Hazel's elemental archive, selected pigments and elements serve as points of departure for Andreas Schlegel, E.S.L Chen, JJ KEAT, Jeremy Sharma (with Jerome Romulus), Lynn Loo, Samantha Lee and Song-Ming Ang. Working across installation, sound, moving image, performance and material-based practices, each artist develops a distinct response to colour and the elements, approaching them as both substance and metaphor.

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Through these encounters, colour becomes unstable once more, slipping between science and art, intuition and system, material and metaphor. A pigment is no longer a fixed shade, but a gathering of materials, histories and narratives - something that can be translated, reinterpreted and transformed.

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Installed within the industrial architecture of Supperhouse at Tanjong Pagar Distripark - a site shaped by storage, handling, circulation and repurposing - The Alchemical Interludes occupies a space already marked by the movement and transformation of matter. The exhibition invites audiences to encounter colour not as something already known or fixed, but as something folded, withheld, decomposed, recomposed and still becoming.

 

The exhibition was accompanied by The Alchemical Interludes: 118 Poems, a publication bringing together the complete collection of poems and extending the project from installation into book form.

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​Writings and reflections: 

Read the interview: The Unseen Protagonist: Unraveling Color in The Alchemical Interludes  with Hazel Lim by Vanini Belarmino in Kanto: Creative Corners

 

Read the reflective essay: Choreographing Exhibitions by Adrian George

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Read the exhibition review: The Alchemical Interludes: When Colour Exists Beyond Sight by Suzzana Low in Artitute
 

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Photo credit: Ajamsali​​​