DONNA ONG will be exhibiting at the Night Festival, in the National Museum. This photo from the museum’s website of her piece, The Crystal City, looks suspiciously like Secret, Interiors:Chrysalis from the Singapore Biennale three years ago. We’ll just have to see it to know.

I was a fan when I first saw the Secret, Interiors series. Just installations of objects in a room, right? But her architecture background comes through in the meticulous detail of every arranged object, and ordinary things come alive (below).

Then I heard that she was actively sharing her life testimony in christian art communities and especially to art students- she has lupus, an autoimmune disease that hasn’t prevented her from pushing herself because she knows that her talent was given to her as her life’s purpose. I heard this from my friend in animation who also has lupus. It’s a condition where the body’s immune system fights its own tissues, and although treatable, people who suffer from lupus have to refrain from physical exertion and sun exposure. As lupus is hereditary, childbirth is not encouraged. The installation shown above was a reference to this.

And then after all this, when my admiration for Donna Ong was peaking the admire-an-artist scale, I found out that she’s my dad’s cousin’s daughter, which makes me related to her! I was at a wedding dinner sitting with these distant family cousins and feeling bored, when they started talking about their artist daughter. I’m skeptical whenever I hear that somebody’s daughter is an artist, because we know how parents think the world of their sketching children. But then I heard the name “Donna”, and it occurred to me to ask this very distant uncle of mine, “Donna? Donna Ong?” And it was, and they pointed me to her table, and pulling my dad along I went like a little starstruck fan to say hello and introduce myself.

The best part is Donna is very nice. She looks younger than she should be and talks like she’s still an art student, rather than an artist who has made it to numerous biennales worldwide. I haven’t seen her since because our families don’t gather at the same gatherings. So I’m still a fan, not family, and I’ll be looking out for her work next weekend like a fan.

Jakarta Biennale 2009