A THING OF BEAUTY is a series of photographed installations of small, locally sourced objects —the objectified minutia of everyday life, culminating in a structural wonderland of monochromatic shapes and shades. Hundreds of objects provisioned for the palette of this work were handpicked from mom and pop shops across Singapore’s residential heartlands, making each installation an anthropological documentary of things we own. Extracting objects from their “invisible normality” isolates each article’s preciousness in form, pushing one to discover an object’s capacity to hold meaning or invent new ones. This process distills the intangible value of common items as fossils and emblems of people, places and memories; while reframing these objects in an imaginary land- scape is an act of storytelling sans words.