Sean Lee: Two People
For more than a decade, Sean Lee has returned to the same two people, photographing his parents as they move through the slow, repetitive rituals of ordinary life. Nothing exceptional appears to happen. Yet these photographs insist that the ordinary is inexhaustible. Looking patiently, Lee reveals how time itself is made visible: in light falling differently across the same room, in bodies subtly altered by age, in gestures repeated until they become a language beyond words. The domestic interior becomes a psychological space where memory, tenderness and estrangement quietly coexist.
There is something almost liturgical in this sustained act of looking. Refusing spectacle or sentimentality, Lee approaches the everyday with a rare attentiveness, allowing the familiar to recover its mystery. Two People is less a document of family than a meditation on presence itself—on the unknowability of those we love, and on photography’s fragile attempt to accompany them as they disappear into time.
Exhibition Programmes
Sat, 7 Nov, 2pm – 5pm
In Light Of: A Portraiture Class by Sean Lee
Objectifs Workshop Space [Sign up here]
Sat, 14 Nov, 3pm – 430pm
Speaking Ordinarily: Sean Lee with Shirlene Noordin
Objectifs Chapel Gallery [RSVP here]
Sat, 5 Dec, 3pm – 430pm
Storied Bodies: Family stories across time and mediumsÂ
With Ezzam Rahman, Sean Lee and Yanyun Chen
Objectifs Chapel Gallery [RSVP here]
Objectifs Chapel Gallery
5 Nov – 20 Dec 2026
Free Admission
Opening Reception
5 Nov 2026, 7pm - 9pm
Share this!
About the Artist
Sean Lee (b. 1985, Singapore) is a photographer whose work explores themes of memory, intimacy, and the passage of time through carefully constructed images rooted in everyday life.Â
He first gained international recognition with Shauna (2007–2009), which was nominated for the Prix Découverte at the Rencontres d’Arles. Since then, he has developed a sustained photographic practice, producing bodies of work that unfold over long periods and reflect on personal and universal experiences. His series Two People received the 2011 ICON de Martell Cordon Bleu Award, marking a significant milestone in his early career. Lee’s works have since been exhibited internationally, including at the Saatchi Gallery, Chobi Mela, and the Indian Art Fair, among others.Â
His photographs are held in the collection of the Singapore Art Museum, reflecting their significance within the region’s contemporary art landscape. In parallel, Lee has maintained an active self-publishing practice. His photobooks have been acquired by major institutional collections, including the Museum of Modern Art Library in New York, the Rare and Distinctive Collections at the University of Colorado Boulder, and the Museum of Art and History in Geneva.Â
Working primarily through long-term projects, Lee’s practice is characterised by a quiet attention to the ordinary. His images often exist between documentation and construction, offering a restrained yet deeply felt reflection on the lives of those closest to him.
About the Guest Speakers
Shirlene Noordin has worked in the arts and culture sector for more than two decades. As head of Phish Communications, an agency specialising in arts communications and events, she organised exhibitions and, with Pernod Ricard Singapore, conceived and ran the ICON de Martell Cordon Bleu photography award from 2010 to 2014. She went on to work on arts partnerships for a global bank, and now works in advancement in the creative education sector.
Dr. Yanyun Chen is an artist drawn to stories that write us, which are written onto and into our bodies; and in turn, the re-writing of these stories through drawing, animation, installation, and sculpture. She traces hurt, grief, wilt, and scars, parses time’s slow violence on botanical and human bodies, and untangles tenuous social constructs around womanhood and upbringing.
Chen has been the recipient of prestigious awards including the Singapore National Arts Council Young Artist Award (2020), ArtOutreach IMPART Visual Artist Award (2019), and SAM President’s Young Talents People’s Choice Award (2018). Chen’s works have been exhibited at Thailand Biennale (2021), Biennale de L’Image en Mouvement (2020) and found in public and private collections. She is represented by Sullivan + Strumpf (Sydney/Melbourne/Singapore).
Chen holds a PhD from the European Graduate School, an MA in Communications, and a BFA in Animation. She was previously a Professor of the Practice at SMFA Tufts University, Boston, and Lecturer at Yale-NUS College in Singapore. Born in 1986, she lives and works in Singapore.
Ezzam Rahman (b.1981, Singapore) is a multi-disciplinary artist known for his interest in the body and the use of common, easily accessible, yet unconventional media. Working across sculpture, installation, digital media, and performance, he creates works that are often autobiographical, time-based, and ephemeral, aiming to pique viewers’ thoughts on the themes of body politics, identity, impermanence, traces, and abjection. Ezzam’s artistic practice exemplifies an embodied aesthetics that is deeply political, affective, and phenomenological. He reclaims the abject as a site of agency, while destabilizing the fixity of materiality, and memory. By working at the intersection of personal loss, cultural belonging, and queer embodiment, his oeuvre became a vital archive of what it means to live and decay within the body.
Ezzam has been the recipient of prestigious awards including the Singapore National Arts Council Young Artist Award (2016), Singapore Art Museum President’s Young Talents Grand Prize and the People’s Choice Award (2015) and Yayasan Mendaki Goh Chok Tong Youth Promise Award (2016). His works have been acquired public and privately by the Singapore Art Museum, Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts Permanent Collection (Singapore), Wise Asia Pacific (Singapore), Ox Warehouse (Macau), Videotage Media Art Collection (Hong Kong) and Konfir Kabo Collection (Indonesia/Australia).
Ezzam holds a Master of Arts, Fine Arts from Goldsmiths’ College, University of London through LASALLE College of the Arts and he is currently an adjunct lecturer in LASALLE College of the arts and Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts, University of The Arts Singapore and Nanyang Institute of Management, Canterbury Christ Church University, UK. In 2021, Ezzam served The Substation, an independent arts
company, Singapore as the artistic director and was the National Institute of Education, Singapore for their NIE Visiting Artist Programme (2023).