With a BA in Economics, I am decent with graphs and numbers, and also quite competent with stain removal from delicate floorings or lubricating engines in shipyards and refineries after working almost a decade in a maintenance chemical company in Singapore, where I grew up. On some occasion, I still wake up in a pleasant disbelief that I am pursuing an MFA in the California Institute of the Arts.

I work primarily with photography, video and installation, and these processes allowed me to explore themes and questions surrounding the discrepancies between representation and the individual identity that I encounter often in my previous profession, and which had continued to follow me no matter where I go. I have no illusion that art can resolve, but I cross my fingers and hope that it may reframe.

Installation shots from:

We own it. It belongs to the world : A Performance by Liang Shan-bo and Zhu Ying-tai

The piece is about a journey into spaces that are still echoing with the myth of the butterfly lover, which connects the ‘imagined community’ that transcends various boundaries. The myth, hence, becomes a site of translation across cultural, linguistic, social, political and other semiotics systems, with multiple non-isolated elements that enter into the composition of the myth. The path is never linear, breaks down, splits, reconstructs and sometimes rejoins.

The question is no longer about what the story is, but what it performs as it is transmitted through its embodiment in the archive (books, artifacts, films, museum exhibitions and visual art) and repertoire (oral transmission, music, operas).  Being introduced to small groups within this massive ‘imagined community’, we get a glimpse of how the myth and it’s reception performs memories, imaginations, desires, national identity, gender, generation, class systems, the changing political climate and other lived experiences.

The myth carries the past, the memories and history. It is constantly reprised into new forms (both tangible and intangible) through its reperformance, which surely will be rewritten in future narratives.  History is mythologized and simultaneously the myth is historicized.