This still life by Singaporean artist Wei Leng Tay was originally commissioned by NTU CCA Singapore for its annual 2020 Lunar New Year greeting. In it, Tay has captured a variety of forms, colours and textures, merging boh Western iconography and Eastern symbolism. "While the image features particular motifs in Chinese culture, the objects in it have historically originated from other parts of the world," shares Tay, who participated in the centre's residency programme last year. "This speaks to the networked and global world that we, and NTU CCA, are all a part of." 

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For the centre's online auction, Alecia Neo contributed on of three print photographs from her Homeostasis series, a photographic collection inspired by the concept of aram, which speaks of virtual in the Thirukkural, an ancient Tamil text for navigating through the trials and tribulations of life. The collection was conceived during Neo's seven-month residency at NTU CCA, which ended in April 2020. Her research focused on hospitality rituals in the region. "The series of images explore the human condition and endless negotiation of perspectives, positions, desires and power. Through them, they express the imagined interventions and attempts at finding balance within ourselves, with others, and in our societies." 

This photographic print on aluminium is extracted from Mobile Lava Flow, the installation that won top honours at the President's Young Talent Awards in 2018. Framed as a series of screenshots, the image shows the sequence of an iPhone that is slowly consumed by scorching volcanic matter. "It looks at the unexpected fascinations of online communities and, to me, showcases the humour, frustration, and contemporary expression of paradoxical desires." Chong, who hopes that contemporary art becomes more of a tool to interrogate our internalised oppressions", was an artist-in-residence at NTU CCA in 2015. 

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To shed light on NTU CCA's efforts in showcasing the city's lost and forgotten locations of historical significance, Wee contributed a fraction of his mixed-media installation series titled Labyrinths (Sungei Road). For the uninitiated, Sungei Road was home to Singapore's largest and oldest flea market but was permanently closed in 2017 to make way for upcoming residential developments. "I specifically chose a work about Sungei Road Market as [the centre's founding director] Ute Meta Bauer has always prioritised conversations around urgent issues of our time—whether it's the haze, our oceans, climate change or the design of our common areas." Wee, who did his residency at NTU CCA in late 2016, hopes that through the work's layers of surfaces and materials, audiences will begin to question social conditions of access and freedom of movement. 

A year after his residency at NTU CCA in 2019, homegrown artist Ang Song Nian debuted a site-specific installation Artificial Conditions at the Tokyo Photographic Art Museum. Featuring 10,000 biodegradable plant pots, it was a project that he had worked on during his residency. Another project that was birthed during that time was the photographic series As They Grow Older and Wiser—and also the piece that Ang will contribute to the auction. The work observes manipulated landscapes in plant nurseries, and addresses the need to control and imitate natural environments in fast-growing cities. At first glance, the image seems to convey the illusion of an expansive natural forest. But a closer look would reveal subtle nuances of human interference that interrogates the reality our relationship with nature. 

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For Alicia Lazzaroni and Antonio Bernacchi, who are behind the Bangkok-based design practice Animali Domestici, NTU CCA's 2019 exhibition The Posthuman City provided them the platform for a discussion on the fragile ecological state of our world—a research topic that they had engaged with in their practice. "It was an inspiring occasion of interdisciplinary dialogue and collective reflection as we found a fertile ground for development and debate, " says the duo. The artwork brings the urbanscape of the Thai capital to mind. Inspired by the classic video game Snake, they printed the city onto canvas and filled the illustration with familiar colours often found in traditional Thai mural paintings. "To showcase the cohabitation of pythons and humans against the backdrop of a large tropical metropolis is almost like giving an insight on the phenomena happening in the Southeast Asian region." 

Homegrown artist Heman Chong, who completed his residency at NTU CCA in 2017, often produces works that intersect between image, performance, situations and writing. For the online auction, he decided to contribute a canvas painting that features the colours of the American flag. Created in reference to American author Ray Bradbury's dystopian novel Fahrenheit 451, the work is a part of a larger series titled Cover (Versions), which consists of reimagined book covers for novels from his extensive reading list, weaving in his unwavering love for literature.