An exhibition with UltraSuperNew Gallery, in collaboration with designers Casimir Simon, Chee Yang Han, Kiat Tan and artist Wayne Lim. We were contacted to see if we wanted to work on an art exhibition, and explore how our research topics and processes as a designer will drive the outputs of art making.
During this exhibition, I was researching and understanding Michel Foucault's Panopticon, and how his concept of surveillance, with the ubiquity of Closed Circuit Television in the modern context, can translate to bio-power, and a bio-political tool to shape behaviour on a macro-level in a surveillance state.
A series of three, titled OBSERVE(R/D), looks into my own understanding and how I perceive "fine art". When I think of fine art, I think of visual markers such as old, archaic engravings and paintings from the 16th to 18th Century. Tying in my research into surveillance as power, I looked for and appropriated images of engravings online, specifically choosing engravings with religious semiotics of worshipping beings with power. With knowledge and background in design processes and principles, these images are then re-edited and juxtaposed, lending a semblance of balance and depth.
The second installation was more of an experimentation. My research has led me to understand that, in a place such as Singapore, the ubiquity of surveillance has normalised into an everyday phenomena. While people are used to being watched, they do not necessarily know who are the ones watching.
In this installation, I looked to placing the audience in both positions in the hierarchy of power, one being the watcher and the other being watched. The small, hidden camera and the screen it is connected to are placed in separate rooms, and as the audience walks through, first unobservant of the camera, to realising that they were being watched.
