Pick Me Up Please, Move Us Around, Mixed media installation (rubber, bamboo, pencil), Goldsmiths University, 2022

 

The space that I’ve built was of my role as the exhibitor, creator, and participant. I am interested in the idea of being in the museum that exhibits cultural artifacts of different times and locations. As I have been going around all sorts of museums in London, from natural sciences to fashion, I began to observe myself being confused with the object shown (art or artifact, is there a difference?) but also trying to resonate with it by likeness of cultures. When the viewer enters a museum space, it is up to them to interpret the multicultural dialogues between cultural object that are mediated by object’s maker and exhibitor’s description. There should be no misleading information or direction in the space to not ‘represent’ cultures. This visual similarity creates cross-cultural connection, and as the exhibitor, creator, and participant, the standards to how the audience and participants should be erased as they mislead the way they interact with the object.[1] Shall I put the instruction at all? What if I just leave them with no instructions? In a way, my participatory installation is an experiment to a module of cultural exhibition. 

 

It was a bit like theatre of a shadow puppet, Wayang Golek, where I, as the dalang or puppeteer, started by manipulating the setting. Then the audience becomes the puppeteer and puppet where they make responses to the props, each other, and the first dalang. 

 

[1] See Karp, I. (ed.) Exhibiting Intention: Some Preconditions of the Visual Display of Culturally Purposeful Objects, Michael Baxandall on to read about the relationship between object exhibited, exhibitor, and viewer.