The text below contains reflections on my residency, alongside reworkings of essays from an art book I published called Ways of Not Seeing: Aphantasia and Its Affiliation. The book shares life with an installation and a series of workshops, all realised when I was an inaugural artist for the National Gallery Singapore’s Calm Room Creative Residency.

Is 4 the same 4 for everybody?
Are all sevens equal?

When the convict ponders the light
is it the same light that shines on you?

For the diseased,
what colour do you think April is?

Which occidental monarchy
will fly flags of poppies?

- Pablo Neruda, Book of Questionsⁱ

This project began with two events in close proximity: my learning that aphantasia, a condition colloquially described as a blindness of the mind’s eye, exists; and that I have it. I learnt of my aphantasia the way one learns of anything invisible: by accident, like walking into a glass door, through a post on Reddit.

Figment 1: What is Aphantasia?

Describing aphantasia is best done through an exercise, like the one I encountered. If you can: close your eyes, and picture in your mind a bright red star. Then, open your eyes again and look at the image below.

Aphantasia test found on Redditⁱⁱ

Which picture looks closest to what you had in mind? For most, pictures four, five, or six correspond best to the mental images seen – indeed a bright red star, or at least a star, as per the instructions. However, for those with aphantasia, their answer will likely be picture one. It depicts a blank, of there being nothing seen. This “blindness of the mind’s eye” is the condition of aphantasia.

The "mind’s eye” describes our capacity to see images in our heads. For most, these images arise immediately when reading fiction, remembering loved ones, dreaming up vacations, or recalling yesterday's dinner. The mental images appear so naturally that one barely thinks of it as a special sense to be had—or lost.

Like anyone else born into a condition, I have never known of life without aphantasia. Belatedly learning of the permanent fixtures in oneself is always disorienting, but it taught me that although we speak of there being many ways to see, there is also an array of ways in which we do not see. Aphantasia, for one, is as invisible as it is lifelong—or invisible precisely because it is lifelong.

From that arises the project’s inquiry: instead of “ways of seeing,” what if we reflect on our “ways of not seeing”? What results from the simple flip?

Figment 2: The Blinding Heat of Clarity

Some respondents are envious of my having aphantasia; they wish to see less in their minds, especially images that are intrusive, relentless, and painful. Dr Craig Venter, who first decoded the human genome, linked his discovery to aphantasia. He said that he was able to spot patterns between concepts betterⁱⁱⁱ since he was not distracted by mental imageries.^ivTheir sentiments point to the fact that not seeing can be its own sanctuary for silence, focus, and possibility.

I wanted to explore exactly that in the workshop designed during the residency. Have you had the experience of noticing something new about your home only after you are elsewhere? Working with friends and artist-therapists Wong Hui Yu and Janel Ang, the workshop’s design is simple: bring a personal object that represents something “unfinished”, “stuck”; and spend time with someone else’s object. Loosely inspired by the concepts of thin and thick description from anthropology—thin descriptions being surface-level observations, and thick descriptions being those informed by context—the point was to foreground how an object one is so familiar with can mean something else, and even much more, through the eyes of a stranger. As with other parts of the project, the workshop honoured the framework of “ways of not seeing”: that there are many ways we do not see, and the space of not seeing, not knowing, does not always represent a lack, and can even be evocative and generative.

A familiar iron and figurine, two items participants brought to the workshop
Image courtesy of Jocelyn Ang

Participants also took another person’s object on a “journey”, by taking the object outside the workshop room as they wandered around the museum together – just as how one might do so with a friend. A hand-woven scarf described and remembered predominantly as a thrift-shop purchase by the original owner, was noted for its tactility by another participant unaware of its origins. A glass bottle of red hearts intended for a crush but was never given, led another person down a trail of curiosity around the museum, as they figured out which locations the red hearts could shine the brightest in. Another realised, after the workshop, that they could only conjure mental imageries of what they have memories of—places recently visited or their partner’s face, easily came to mind, even when everything else could not.

The workshop’s structure was kept simple to cater to a wide range of audience. Together with National Gallery Singapore, it was conducted for the Gallery’s Wellness Festival, Light to Night Festival, Slow Art Day, and for a special group of visitors from Movement for the Intellectually Disabled Singapore (MINDS).

What we know, who we are, what we love. Despite best intentions, our impressions of even—or especially—what we hold dearest can be most bogged by context, as in the saying that “familiarity breeds contempt”. In such moments, it turns out that surface and casual descriptions from an invested stranger can, refreshingly, clarify and expand.

Ways of Not Seeing workshop; participant looking at collage of items taken on adventures
Image courtesy of Jocelyn Ang

Figment 3: Memory and Mind Decays

I am sometimes asked whether, given that I cannot “see” in my mind, I can “remember”.

Picturing a Candle (2022–2023)
Image courtesy of Joseph Nair, Memphis West Pictures

The question has no clean answer. Attempts to assess to what extent or in what form I can remember is further complicated by Severely Deficient Autobiographical Memory (SDAM), a condition often co-occurring with aphantasia.

Autobiographical Memory, and relatedly Episodic Memory, is the ability to relive moments from one’s past, as if viewing a film from one’s perspective. In contrast, SDAM is characterised by a “lifelong inability to vividly recollect or re-experience personal past events from a first-person perspective.”^v An article on Susie McKinnon, the first person to be identified with SDAM, explains: if we think of memory as a “favourite book with pages that you return to again and again”, having SDAM is like having access only to the index, or its Wikipedia entry.^vi

You can imagine how aphantasia and SDAM correlate. Both involve neither seeing the image nor experiencing the past event itself, merely the knowing of it. Not seeing the bright red star, but only feeling the concept of it. Not flipping to the actual page in the book, but merely glancing at its index. One might know of past events existing, but is unable to recover the “spatial, perceptual, and mental state details” of the event itself, nor conduct the subjective re-living that episodic memory entails.^vii

I do have aphantasia—but I might never know if I also have SDAM.^viii How we dream and imagine are hard to articulate, but subjective experience of memory might be the most elusive of all. How do we speak to each other about what we have individually or communally forgotten? Memories decay without our realising. Forgetting makes its leaving unknown.

Figment 4: Picturing a Candle

During the residency, I had a chance to create an installation. I looked at the Vividness of Visual Imagery Questionnaire (VVIQ), a test measuring one’s visual imagination (where I scored zero). Because of aphantasia, I cannot retain images of my past, and I cannot conjure the four scenes that the VVIQ prompts for: someone familiar, a spot of nature, a shopfront, and a sunrise. But I wanted to realise them during the residency, in the physical realm, with images that are also falling apart in their own way: flood-damaged photographs from my childhood in Jakarta.

Picturing a Candle (2022–2023)
Image courtesy of Joseph Nair, Memphis West Pictures

The title of the work is "Picturing a Candle". This is what subjects of neuroimaging studies are asked to do: enclosed in an MRI machine, lying face-up, with headphones over your ears, you are instructed, in a "strangely genderless voice,” to visualise a candle.^ix

Some ask: if I cannot visualise images, how do I understand what any object is? What does it mean to perceive the concept of an object without its image? The straightforward answer is that every object has non-visual properties, which people with aphantasia can still think of without mental seeing. How poetic, I thought, a candle. I am not alone in noting the significance of a candle: variously, friends working as therapists and theatre instructors have used a similar prompt, "picture a candle", to evoke calmness, forgiveness, stepping into another being or empathy with another life. There will never be candles in my mind, but because of how sensorially and symbolically evocative the thought of it is, its void leaves an imprint nonetheless.

Because a candle, beyond being seen, is also felt, I wanted the work to be heat-responsive, layering the images with thermochromic ink that becomes translucent upon heating; upon touch.

Picturing a Candle (2022–2023)
Image courtesy of Joseph Nair, Memphis West Pictures

An early quandary I had was how to create an artwork (a stimuli) in a Calm Room (a space meant to relax from overstimulation). The thermochromic ink that revealed images beneath through touch was one way to give visitors autonomy: they decide to see the image only if they want to. Additionally, we held discussions with members of the neurodivergent community for their input on size of panels, intensity of light and type of fabric for the covers. The work was placed at a height that allowed all — children, wheelchair users — to comfortably reach it. I also collaborated with Singapore artist, ila, on a sound piece that accompanies the installation, with the work weaving around a series of crowdsourced responses to two questions: “what do you see when you close your eyes?” and “how do you feel when you close your eyes?” We decided for the sound to not be played through the speakers in the Calm Room, but instead accessed through scanning a QR code or using a headphone available on-site. Altogether, both the visual and sonic components of the installation were designed so as to both be there and not; visitors can modulate how fully they want to experience the stimuli, through their own deciding of how much to approach or activate the work.

Picturing a Candle (2022–2023)
Image courtesy of Joseph Nair, Memphis West Pictures

Figment 0: Where I End and You Begin

Aphantasia, to me, gestures at the infinite ways that our visions and understandings might never align. But even without knowing its shape, we can give it a name; let’s call it ambiguous loss.^x First coined by Pauline Boss in 1970, the term is used to describe occasions like when someone fails to return from war, or when someone slips into dementia. Where the loss begins and ends might never be known, but a term like “ambiguous loss” gives form even to what there might never be closure for, and to what we might eventually grow to apprehend as just is.

The excavating of personal condition is not a journey endeavoured alone; I did it with the artistic, emotional, and intellectual support of others. My gratitude extends to friends and respondents, many beyond those I managed to include in the essay. They all remind me of the intersubjectivities that populate our outer and inner worlds, and the humbling truth that we do not singularly own or manifest even what we hold most sacred or dear.

I also had formative interactions with Dr Dawn-joy Leong, an autistic artist and researcher^xi, whom the Gallery provided as an expert resource for the residency; I am grateful for her attention, critique, and questions. As people on the spectrum process language more literally than most, she attuned me to the many ways in which language causes slippage, and to other ways of asking questions through simpler or multimodal means. We had extended conversations on imagery, directness, language, consciousness, and the many ways of being, sensing, and meaning-making in this world. Crucially, she was instrumental to the building of the calm room itself; her essay on precisely that can be found here.

A closing note of gratitude by way of sharing the context of this essay’s publication: it shares life with an art book, installation, and a series of workshops, all part of a larger project realised during my time as the inaugural artist for the National Gallery Singapore’s Calm Room Creative Residency. My gratitude to the institution and the team that supported me, for their brave gamble and gentle support. Two years of necessary meandering led to the start of what hopes to be a generative, enchanting, and compassionate framework for understanding what we “see” or do not, what we can share with each other or might never will.

Jevon Chandra

Jevon Chandra is currently a co-lead of art collective Brack, a Foresight Analyst at the Centre for Strategic Futures (CSF), and recently the inaugural National Gallery Singapore (NGS) Calm Room artist-in-residence. He is altogether form and occupation-agnostic; rather, he is interested in any projects that play with disciplines, are attuned to (physical) sites, and are kind.

The above essay is a reworking of various reflections written for “Ways of Not Seeing: Aphantasia and Its Affiliations”, an art book published with the support of the Calm Room Creative Residency. The art book will always be seeking distribution from select outlets; to purchase the book most immediately, or offer platforms for distribution, please contact the artist through:
Website: www.jevonchandra.org
IG: https://www.instagram.com/jev_nchandra/
Mail: jevon.studio@gmail.com