The defenseless body in my new series “Uncontrollable” shows we are all born the same. We are born as embodied creatures. We have no ability to cognize or make sense of the world. We are aware of others and self only through the world. We recognize all needs through our bodies. To be consciousness - or rather, to be an experience - is to hold inner communication with the world, the body, and other people, to be with them instead of being beside them.

From the words of Merleau-Ponty, “…by thus remaking contact with the body and with the world, we shall rediscover oneself.”

Ong Jing Ren, Rooney. “Clandestine.”2019.

ROONEY ONG JING REN

Rooney Ong Jing Ren is an emerging artist who works primarily in acrylic on wood. He’s best known for the technique of applying paint to a wood surface in order to form a pattern or image. As a living material, it incorporates the organic, irregular forms he has always been drawn to.