Visual Journalist & Filmmaker
Wayne Lim (b. 2000) is a visual journalist and filmmaker based between Singapore and Perth.
He is a recent graduate from Nanyang Technological University's Wee Kim Wee School of Communication and Information. Across both journalistic and personal projects, he is often drawn to themes of longing and belonging.
His work has been published in Austin’s alt-weekly The Austin Chronicle and Singapore’s daily broadsheet The Straits Times, and awarded at College Photographer of the Year, the world’s largest collegiate photojournalism competition.
His films have also screened at the Oscar-qualifying Short Shorts Film Festival & Asia (Japan) and the Singapore Youth Film Festival, among others.
As a lens-based artist, his creative practice is grounded in an ongoing search for self and home.
Certain Deaths (2025)
Fading Frequencies (2024)
Unlearning, Relearning (2023)
Photography
Everyday Heroes (Iceland, 2024)
Presidential Election (Singapore, 2023)
Concerts (2023 - 2025)
Events / Singles (2023 - 2025)
Editorial
The Austin Chronicle (2023)
SPOILT Zine (2025)
Visual Arts
Apparatus for Long-Distance Recall (2025)
Measures of Distance (2024)
Bachelor of Communication Studies
(Highest Distinction)
2021 - 2025
Mediacorp Indiego, Singapore
Jan - Jun 2025
Editorial Intern
The Austin Chronicle, USA
May - Jul 2023
Production Intern
Atypicalfilms, Singapore
Feb - Jul 2021
Gold, Individual Multimedia Category
2024
WITH HARAJUKU HALL, Tokyo, Japan
June 2025
Singapore Youth Film Festival
Singapore
2024
26th YOUKI International Youth Media Festival
Wels, Austria
2024
Objectifs FreshTake!
Singapore
2024
Short Circuit 7
Singapore
2023
UT RTF Longhorn Denius Student Film Showcase
Austin, Texas, USA
2023
Gillman Barracks, Singapore
2025
Between Queerness and Religion
Singapore Film Society, by Amadeus Yeo
2025
Two-channel video installation
Singapore, 2025
05:00
Borrowing from the visual language of preservation, Apparatus for Long-Distance Recall stages the fragility of memory and unfolds as an active site where fragments of the past are manipulated, replayed, and briefly brought into focus. Drawing from a childhood marked by distance and dislocation, the work reconstructs moments of love and longing between parents and child. What resurfaces in this archaeology of self is partial, tender, and unresolved — eavesdropping on the past casts new light on the present, and gestures quietly towards what could come next.
Exhibition
Mind The Gap, Gillman Barracks, 2025
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| Adapted from an artist talk on 26 April 2025: For the last 15 years, I have lived some 4,000 km away from my parents. Five years before they moved to Australia, I had already begun living with my paternal grandparents, who were also helping to care for my newborn brother. After many years of visits and missed opportunities for reunion, I will finally be joining my parents in Perth in the second half of this year, now the same age my dad was when he became a father. This served as the context for the making of Apparatus for Long-Distance Recall. Last year, I discovered many photos and videos from my childhood that I had never seen before, all hidden away in a cupboard at home. Many of them ended up in a photobook I made last year, which measured distance — both physically and emotionally — between me and my parents over the years (see: Measures of Distance). It was the first time I had engaged with the idea of art as a means to confront and process my childhood and relationship with my parents. It didn’t feel like enough, and so this work is sort of a sequel to that, and part of what I foresee becoming a long-term obsession. Watching hours and hours of childhood home videos foreign to me, I felt many things. Sometimes, I was eavesdropping on conversations; sometimes, I was finally hearing messages left for me; and sometimes, I felt a certain discomfort knowing how some moments take on new meaning in everything that has happened since then. I pitched this work as an archaeology of self, using language of preservation, and presenting memory as specimen. Instead of feeling like I had to make sense of it all by the end of the semester, my goal was to make this process of sitting and listening part of the work itself. In the work, you watch as I play/pause/replay each clip. You also see me unravelling lifted polaroid emulsions floating in water. These are both attempts at representing recall and memory. It’s almost like you’re placed in my position as I watch clips for the first time and realise things like: “Wow, I’ve never heard my dad say the words ‘it’s okay’ to me.” You watch as I actively try to make sense of scenes from the past, highlight them to myself, almost like I’m wishing for more moments like these in the future. Both of these visuals are ultimately “projected” via an illusion called Pepper’s ghost. An American artist Josh Ellingson uses this technique in his work, often manifesting in very light-show-like “holograms”. From the start of this process, I knew at least part of the project would be presented in this way, in bell jars. Something about them holding physical space for something ultimately intangible and from the past. In a way, using all this scientific language was my way of detaching myself slightly from the project; to treat it like an experiment, even if it ended up becoming something cathartic. Making this work while also learning other analogue techniques in the experimental photo class, I reflected a lot this semester on image transfers as poetically imperfect attempts to preserve memory. You engage with the image in a physical, tangible way, and yet the result often loses detail … but perhaps retains the emotions and essence of the moment. There is admittedly a strange irony in the expression of yearning … without actually communicating it to my parents. Turning 25 this year, I’ve begun to understand how deeply my childhood has affected me. At the same time, I’ve become so keenly aware that I watched my parents grow up. I don’t know if I’ll ever confront them with these feelings. I’m sorry I’m only vulnerable to strangers. I’m still trying to make sense of it all, moment by moment. In the meantime, I hope my work resonates with anyone who struggles to assert that they have a healthy, open relationship with their parents, or even communicate with them at all. View recording here. |