Brief for Open Call on Home: There are physical and metaphorical places that give meaning to the word ‘home’. What does home mean to you? How does it inspire or manifest itself in your artistic practice? How has your idea of home and your identity been challenged, misconstrued, and/or transformed over time?
1.
What kind of creature do I become
If I have no gender
No race
Scars all over my body
And the genes of animals?
What kind of daylight would allow me to exist?
2.
But what If, I reclaim. I reclaim both my existence and my world’s alienation.
I become what I feel inside and curate a parade out of it.
I build a safe space, framed by broken narratives, where I could live
A space of invitation
‘You are welcome to come over if you like’
I weave a web of bio-political resistance, intersectionality of gender, sexuality, race, class and spices. A togetherness that unties itself through the rebellion of humanity. Radical tenderness,
Subverting dominance and submission through a conflicting journey of grasping onto, and letting go of power.
3.
Communication—its attempts and failures.
4.
Art to me is similar to how Clive Barker transported into the alien worlds in Hellraiser, and somehow through this radical dissociation with humanity, those spaces in themselves gushes out their own urgency. Or underground queer spaces, where subhumans and inhuman among the society connect with one another, in a temporary, safe space.
5.
Between performance and painting
Lays a place where I call home
Improvisational movement transformed into mark makings
Marking makings became foundation of layers
Layer are tenderness, forms of communications, penetrating through the barriers of translation
I wish to create unknown worlds, capturing alien orgies, and explore how those creatures communicate energy through touch.
The carving, necessity, urgency and pleasure of construction and destruction, possibilities of how freedom and fear could coexist both on the canvas and within us.
6.
I needed space, so I created space through the digital realm, virtual reality became my reality.
I needed to move, to burn my rotten soul down so that it could be reborn again.
So I moved. Inside the newly created space, same yet different worlds, documentations of the traces of where, and how my body went.
7.
I needed to touch, needed to experience bodily gestures, bodies,
The body, my body, as it were, became an altered thing, and my experience of the world became closer and closer to that of a cyborg.
The digital once again allowed me to
Working with 3d models just like how I would work with my performers during rehearsals
8.
Memories and a need to dance, to dance but oh in improvisation. Shamanism.
Rituals in movement, channelling energies between life and death.
I become, and at the same time dancing with ____________.
9.
I become, and at the same time dancing with,
River, water, mermaid, thunder, trees and transformations between subtle and extreme emotions.
Subtracted moments within broken narrative,
An epic war, recycled over and over again
Beings in rage, pride, pain, family destroyed and rebuild, death and rebirth
A reflection of the condition of my soul, a form of empowerment, necessity, to be alive.
10.
Ancient mythologies from the era when spirits lived alongside humans.
Words I could not say, all shrieked into one single moment, and then shutters into endless spectacles
A different perception of time than what I have had knowledge of
An ongoing performance, concretion of energies.
11.
Discovery of a new space, more to offer me than I asked for.
Occupying spaces, visual poetry, vulnerability in time and space
Yet a safer distance
And perhaps, a more equal power relationship with the audience,
Something I’ve always been looking for.
A world where I could let go of the human body.
Conversations with other beings.
12.
Bodily gestures progressed onto creating creatures with AI
Beings grow out of human organs
But how do I care for the digital?
More than a tool
But respect, tenderness, coexistence
I try to absorb rather than use, letting the digital influence yet construct my own figurative forms
They are my demons, hope, friends, fear and comfort.
13.
I explore aspects of communication through shamanistic experiences of channeling energies between transgression and tenderness, form the spectacles through unknown worlds of
otherness.
Through rituals
Witchcraft as spells to open those doors
Self created safe space
14.
When ‘otherness’ becomes normality
There are then no more ‘otherness’
witchcraft materials, painterly materials
Sand, wax, mud, egg, ink, tree branches
Paintings as unknown worlds process of painting as rituals
What are some racial misconceptions / ignorant remarks people have made at you, about your culture or your identity?
I find it difficult to pin down the specific cases; Was it being bullied at school for being the only Asian, and I could only eat my lunch in the toilet otherwise I would get beaten up?; Or was it the moment when I realized that I was desperately learning about the western queer culture just so that I could be embraced into a queer community that wasn’t ready to learn the other way around?; Or was it being discriminated and disrespected by cis men because I was working as a sex worker to earn my tuition fee?
It could be all of them and at the same time none of them. When I am building my safe space in art none of these things really matters anymore.
Broken Englizh 