Pulau Sebakau explores the topics of identity, history, absence and displacement through a postcard installation. The series features an imagined narrative about a character called PB who was exiled to Pulau Sebakau, a fictitious southern island of Singapore. The 1960s-1970s saw rapid depopulation in the offshore islands of Singapore due to the socio-economic needs of the new and developing nation. Mirroring that, Sebakau would also succumb to the relentless march of progress and its inhabitants would be resettled to the mainland. Whilst living on the island, PB encounters the indigenous communities who make their living traditionally by fishing. Reflecting on the island’s landscape and the lives of its inhabitants, PB would share these insights with his wife in a series of postcards. Thus, he offers a moving portrait of a place and people who face the prospect of leaving their island home and the uncertainty of resettlement. Using old photographs from the personal collection of Teo Yen Teck, an islander from Pulau Seking, Zeng allows these real images of a lost island to speak for themselves, while PB’s narrative runs on the other side of the postcard. Through this work, Zeng seeks to explore Foucault’s notion that “fictions are experiments in truth” and how fiction upholds ‘truth’ in that it allows us to imagine an “alternative interpretation of the present”.

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Green Zeng’s Pulau Sebakau is presented at the 10th Singapore International Photography Festival as part of Shifting Images: Photography from Singapore 2000–2025, under In Circles.