Presented by FOST GALLERY

Donna Ong created five fantastical ‘worlds’ in this series: Desert, Garden, Underground, Undergrowth, Underwater. They were made by arranging miniature hand-cut paper shapes of the flora and/or fauna found in the respective ‘world’; with each ‘world’ housed inside a rectangular glass vitrine. This mode of display evokes the idea of a terrarium: a miniature landscape within a glass container. While a terrarium contains real plant specimens, their placement and the environment are entirely deliberate and controlled, bridging reality and the magical. This series of works were specially commissioned for the Gallery Children’s Biennale 2019: Embracing Wonder at the National Gallery Singapore. They were later shown at the Kinderbiennale (2021), Groninger Museum, in the Netherlands.