Both life and moving images unfold their potential as time goes by. Every time a screen or projector is switched on, a story captured in the past is resurrected in the present. With an appreciation for this kinship, the six artists in Time’s Return speculate on the unknowns of the afterlife and interpret the linear and cyclical life experiences inherent in diverse cultural and spiritual beliefs.

Phuttiphong Aroonpheng’s A Tale of Heaven (2011) reconstructs a memory of death and the visceral experience of a late father’s return. In Ashish Avikunthak’s Vakratunda Swaha (2010) and Pathompon Mont Tesprateep’s Song X (2017), the artists remember two deceased friends. Tesprateep experiments with expired 8 mm and 16 mm film to compose a posthumous song for his late band member, while Avikunthak skilfully manipulates different camera speeds and uses reverse motion to represent his friend’s spiritual return. In Nguyen Trinh Thi’s Spring Comes Winter After (2008), reversed footage of found imagery from a funeral is employed to speculate whether the destiny of a banned Vietnamese poet could have been changed. Samia Halaby’s kinetic computer painting Yafa (1992/2019) evokes childhood memories of the Palestinian port city through circular geometrical abstraction. And in Chang Chao-Tang and Lim Giong’s documentary masterpiece The Boat Burning Festival + (1979/2019), a Daoist ritual evokes spiritual practices and reflects on intergenerational cultural transmissions that transcend time and place.