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Commissioned by The Everyday Museum, a public art initiative by Singapore Art Museum
{still} life is a site-specific installation drawing from the diversity and communal nature of Duxton Plain Park and its environs in Tanjong Pagar.
The title itself is an invitation, with the curly brackets alluding to faces in profile, asking the viewer to look around them to discover visual elements or perspectives that might not be apparent otherwise.
Comprising round convex, concave, and flat surfaces in a variety of reflective finishes, on poles referencing lamp posts, this cluster sits on an exuberant and innocuous rubber mound resembling a playground. Reminiscent of security mirrors, these surfaces function as picture frames picking out details in the environment that are often overlooked or simply taken for granted — old vs new, commercial vs residential, public vs private. Given their form, these mirrors also evoke notions of surveillance and safety, bringing forth questions about who is watching whom, and the liminal space between preying on and protecting.
Pictorially, the reflected images in the mirrors can be thought of as ‘still life’, but when activated by viewers and bystanders in the frame, they reference the proliferation of the selfie or the round profile picture in the age of social media, as well as the 'decisive moment' of street photography, highlighting the performative nature of daily life. Translucent iridescent panels placed in front of the mirrors, or stacked above each other, act as literal filters distorting the images, suggestive of digital edits in analog.
Though it may appear playful, {still} life is a meditation and reminder that life, in all its nuanced forms, surrounds us, still.