Background
Artist's Statement
My artwork explores the power dynamics in a public space. As an installation artist who works primarily in public spaces, I’m often confronted with complex layers of public audience. To me, the term “public” is an oxymoron, because instead of meaning a space that "belongs to everyone", it actually serves the dominant culture. The question of who constitutes the dominant and which groups of people does the term “public” really serve, are pertinent inquiries in my art practice.
Based on certain foundation theories such as the study of Jeremy Bentham’s Panopticon and Foucault’s Discipline and Punish, I believe architecture is a tool that shapes social behaviour in the masses. A kind of social reform, if you will, as seen in the 18th century urban planners like Hauasmen’s Paris. Architecture and spatial design is not innocent. Instead it masks layered power structures.
“Henri Lefebvre studied urban space and Foucault's interpretation of the panopticon prison, arriving at the conclusion that spatiality is a social phenomenon”
My art installations may differ in form, however they are connected in principle. They are site-specific, explorations in materiality and buildability and it has notions of creating a temporary “place”. I consider my art installation as tools to reveal the invisible site forces that exist on that space. The interactions created within the artwork is to contrast the existing behaviour of the audience on site. For example, if the site is normally a space where people pass by, like a corridor or hallway, my art installation would turn it into a meeting place, where the people would spend time talking to other people.
Recently, my interests have been towards this exploration of feminine spaces versus masculine spaces. Questions such as “does space have a gender?” and if public spaces encourage social inequality are critical issues for me as an artist, at the moment.
