PERFECT STRANGER
2018
PERFECT STRANGER is an installation where vast sheets of paper, ebbing with words and gradient hues, lie in parallel synchronicity to form a soft stratosphere of colour. Each sheet emits a phosphorescence, arising from a synthesis of shades unique to, and reflective of its script.
This verbose, colour-drenched body of work is a distilled collection of texts, drawn from a daily Q&A project with a stranger, an Israeli psychologist, over a year. It is a fossilized, fleeting exchange between two women from different pasts, presents and futures.
At once, a static yet glimmering vista of shades, the installation is visually emblematic of the irony and balance in binaries and dualities — between the monumental and mundane, stillness and change, materiality and ephemerality, was and is, hello and goodbye.
True Story, PERFECT STRANGER, Archival Giclee, Acid Free, 320 gsm, 870 X 1170 mm, Edition of 3, 2018
Installation of PERFECT STRANGER for 'Faith, Beauty, Love, Hope' at the Asian Civilisations Museum, 2021
“Every day, the psychologist would ask a question, and I would respond. I still recall writing from my hospital bed after giving birth to my first child — one of many pivotal events, which took place during the course of our quotidian ritual. Over time, this inquisition and disclosure, began to unveil an intimate tapestry of fact and fiction, spanning across a barrage of observations, questions, stories, confessions and jokes.”
Don't, PERFECT STRANGER, Archival Giclee, Acid Free, 320GSM, 870 X 1170 MM, 2018
Past Perfect, PERFECT STRANGER, Archival Giclee, Acid Free, 320GSM, 870 X 1170 MM, 2018
Swim, PERFECT STRANGER, Archival Giclee, Acid Free, 320GSM, 870 X 1170 MM, 2018
PERFECT STRANGER, for 'Faith, Beauty, Love, Hope' at the Asian Civilisations Museum, 2021
Perfect Stranger is an experiment in freezing time, or more accurately, moments of oneself over time. It often strikes me that when someone says he misses something, he ordinarily alludes to a person, time or place; when what he truly misses is a version of himself, which he can never get back to again. This work is thus a re-imagination of a self-portrait, and a narrative time capsule of oneself right here, right now. After all, what is each of us, but a vessel of vanishing selves? And the things we thought and felt in a passing moment, the only remnants of the day?
PERFECT STRANGER, 'Faith, Beauty, Love, Hope' at the Asian Civilisations Museum, 2021
PERFECT STRANGER, Installation at Chan + Hori, 2018
PERFECT STRANGER, Box Set, Edition of 300, 2018
