(b. 1986, Singapore) began her practice as a fine art photographer while pursuing her Bachelors in Fine Art at the School of Art, Design and Media at NTU, Singapore. As an artist, her work puts priority on the process as well as maintaining a high-level of craft in the execution of an image. She believes that these are the key elements in the personalisation of her work. Despite the discipline-oriented methodology, she allows chance, chaos and emotional impulse to be necessary driving forces in her practice. She has exhibited in Singapore, Philippines, New York and London. She is based in Singapore.

Curator’s note:

The Hall of Hyperdelic Youth is Mintio’s newest series of work. Her images portray the faces and computer screens of teenage online gamers. This combines their psychological states of mind and the visuals of the games they play. The virtual world possesses infinite possibility for these players. Its constructed landscapes both defy and mimic the logics of space. In this metaphysical land, we can be anyone we want, we can fly, kill, be beautiful, be incredibly strong or impossibly fast, what Mintio terms, ‘virtual athletes’. Using the light source from the computer screen along with extended exposures, the camera records the subject’s movements in the midst of playing the game. What is striking is that in the 3-10 minute duration of exposure, they barely stir. Although zombies in the real world, their minds are in constant activity on the internet. Or from another perspective, as expressed by the title, they have an out of body, semi-spiritual experience.

After spending days and weeks in a subterranean gaming parlour in Dhoby Ghaut station in Singapore, Mintio was able to gain the confidence of her sitters in order to photograph them. What the photographs do not reveal are the fashions and interaction of this youth culture as experienced in the gaming parlour, itself a complex system of codes. It is this process of engagement that is equally as important as the final image to the artist. What she does expose is the desensitised world of violence, role-play and escapism via the video game through images that also speak of beauty in technology.