Sean Cham

Afteryears (2023)
Digital images

The year is 2065.
The city has collapsed beyond repair.
Nature can no longer be controlled nor contained.
The garden, wilding and overgrown.
The classical, the brutalist, the universal, now follies.
We are hired to play the role of the hermit.

Afteryears complements an older body of work, Yesteryears (2014-2015), which examines the modern ruins of Singapore. Afteryears projects forward, imagining the ruins of a distant future. While Yesteryears questioned what was lost in the wake of progress, Afteryears asks what progress itself will leave behind. Together, the two series interrogate what a city chooses to preserve, what it allows to decay, and what it cannot, eventually, prevent.

Exhibition Summary

• Exhibited:
  • Yale-NUS College, Singapore (2025)

Parts of these images have been generated using an artificial intelligence tool. All persons, places, and events portrayed are entirely fictitious.