In this primarily visual essay, I consider the ways in which Yee I-Lann’s art revisits the colonial archive in an attempt to affect our understanding of its geographic, social and historical implications. Stitching together concerns about time, space and feelings, Yee I-Lann’s work addresses Southeast Asia’s history of colonial practices through her method of ‘speculative photomontage’, creating speculative moments to suggest new meanings within past and present contexts. In so doing, her work opens up the single photographic moment in time by recontexualizing and recombining signifiers of memory, landscape, personal, and social histories, emotional and political affiliations through her photomontage process. The visuality of her approach facilitates alternative – and affective – ways of seeing the ripple effects of histories and geographies.
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