Floating afar


Artwork details of exhibition "Assemblage: Me, my story and I", Dogma Prize, 2023.


Installation view of exhibition "Assemblage: Me, my story and I", Dogma Prize, 2023.


Installation view of exhibition "Assemblage: Me, my story and I", Dogma Prize, 2023.


Installation view of exhibition "Assemblage: Me, my story and I", Dogma Prize, 2023.


Installation view of exhibition "Assemblage: Me, my story and I", Dogma Prize, 2023.


Installation view of exhibition "Assemblage: Me, my story and I", Dogma Prize, 2023.

Info
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A site-adapted installation to retell a Performance.
Digital printing and a mound of baby formula that will gradually melt upon contact with the elements.

* The particular remnants of this work attempt in unison to recreate a performance of mine, without live viewing - a prerequisite for performance art. It is akin to how I have heard, read, seen, been told, and imagined other performing pieces that I was not able to witness, and opening up to the possibility of orchestrating a unique new piece in the theatre of mind. I've always liked how a performance is "alive" as such.

Statement

When I saw the expression "my story", the first thing that came to mind was my previous performance. One day, upon receiving an invitation to "cover" another performance, I pondered about the "me, myself and I", or a certain authentic self, about whether a performance deeply ingrained with a personal identity can change forms in varying contexts? I have been thinking much about the piece "A protest against space" by Tuan Mami after all these years because these images keep haunting me: the muscles on a faceless male body, the burning sensation, black vs. red, the exhausted. hurling, the sweat turning the hovering chili powder in the air into a stinging paste
...
what if, it was a female body instead? what if, it was me instead? then what does that female identity protest against?
...
I choose baby formula. For it is white, soft, sweet, nurturing, sticky, creamy. It floats in the air before landing on the audience enduringly, fluidly. It clings onto my hand after each hurling, the more I hurl, the more it attaches, so I just keep hurling and hurling
...
I name this work "Floating afar" as a gesture to acknowledge the difficult goodbyes, the tormenting trade-offs of separation and abandonment, the helplessness of me slinging those milky pigments into space to protest, in the name of my most concealed pains.
...
But they linger, clutching onto me. They stay on my head, my face, my hair, my body and my exposed breasts, fusing with my sweat, making milky streams that burn with sweetness.

And I realise, a new form of performing has just been conceived and born from my personal reflections on another performance piece.

Statement is excerpted from “Assemblage: Me, my story and I" Exhibition Booklet, 2023, p.19.