I am interested in the primal self and our connection to a larger cosmic consciousness. I explore how art can facilitate an encounter with the wilderness inside by creating immersive interactions that take audiences away from busy, everyday reality, deep into silence and contemplation. Through my work audiences are invited to inhabit and question a primordial state of being, thereby examining the human condition and its possibilities for connection to an unseen natural world.
A vital part of my practice is an inquiry into the modern role of Clown, involving themes of innocence, melancholy and the search for self. Jesters have always been fascinating fools speaking truths, unashamedly portraying humans in the circus of life, a display at once grotesque and blissful. My on-going performative persona is Pierrot, a forlorn clown from the Italian Commedia dell’arte tradition. Pierrot is childhood, the longing for love and adoration of the unattainable, characterised by moon worship. A conduit for larger themes of existence, I explore numerous incarnations and interactive possibilities of Pierrot in various mediums, from collaborative film to interactive performance art. The Silence Experiments is my on-going one-audience encounter where intuition and intimacy meet under a sheet. Lintukoto (Finland, 2014) painted a journey of metamorphosis in the Finnish forest, while Leo XIII Dream (Singapore, 2011) was an interactive site-specific performance-installation where tiny audience groups played silently in the basement of a cosmically transformed old electrical station cum art centre.
I believe in the elegant collision of reality with fantasy to illuminate larger truths, especially in filmmaking. Drawing upon my deep fascination with personal histories, eccentric characters and the abyss of aging, my experimental documentaries have been about offbeat topics like elderly love and sex and being female and growing old. In 2015, I premiered my first feature film at the 26th Singapore International Film Festival. Singapore Minstrel is about the trying and beautiful universe of my romantic partner Roy Payamal, the wildest busker of a country ranked the world’s most emotionless society.
I work to deepen the dialogue between life and art by creating collaborative projects that are robust, communal exercises in reinvention. Recently, I conceptualised and made an experimental short with people in Sarecha village, Rajasthan, India, about a circus visiting their village. In The Handbook of Everyday Secrets (2015), a group partook in weekly experiments like reading obituaries and researching their neighbourhood, eventually producing a book encapsulating a reimagination of everyday life as well as the people and spaces around.
A vital part of my practice is an inquiry into the modern role of Clown, involving themes of innocence, melancholy and the search for self. Jesters have always been fascinating fools speaking truths, unashamedly portraying humans in the circus of life, a display at once grotesque and blissful. My on-going performative persona is Pierrot, a forlorn clown from the Italian Commedia dell’arte tradition. Pierrot is childhood, the longing for love and adoration of the unattainable, characterised by moon worship. A conduit for larger themes of existence, I explore numerous incarnations and interactive possibilities of Pierrot in various mediums, from collaborative film to interactive performance art. The Silence Experiments is my on-going one-audience encounter where intuition and intimacy meet under a sheet. Lintukoto (Finland, 2014) painted a journey of metamorphosis in the Finnish forest, while Leo XIII Dream (Singapore, 2011) was an interactive site-specific performance-installation where tiny audience groups played silently in the basement of a cosmically transformed old electrical station cum art centre.
I believe in the elegant collision of reality with fantasy to illuminate larger truths, especially in filmmaking. Drawing upon my deep fascination with personal histories, eccentric characters and the abyss of aging, my experimental documentaries have been about offbeat topics like elderly love and sex and being female and growing old. In 2015, I premiered my first feature film at the 26th Singapore International Film Festival. Singapore Minstrel is about the trying and beautiful universe of my romantic partner Roy Payamal, the wildest busker of a country ranked the world’s most emotionless society.
I work to deepen the dialogue between life and art by creating collaborative projects that are robust, communal exercises in reinvention. Recently, I conceptualised and made an experimental short with people in Sarecha village, Rajasthan, India, about a circus visiting their village. In The Handbook of Everyday Secrets (2015), a group partook in weekly experiments like reading obituaries and researching their neighbourhood, eventually producing a book encapsulating a reimagination of everyday life as well as the people and spaces around.