VINES, 2024
Pondok Jawa/Kota Panpan Along the road of Sultan Gate sits the ruins of Pondok Jawa, a former lodging house for the Javanese in Kampong Gelam. Within the remnants of brick columns and the fallen Banyan tree, there still exists an invisible ecology of flora and fauna.
VINES evokes the ruins and the banyan tree as a metaphor for community and ecology. But it moves from metaphor to creation. The constructed installation repeats and reproduces the appearance and biological processes of the former banyan tree. The mild steel branches rust, resembling roots; intermittent sprinkles of water enliven a natural habitat, powered by the sun (through solar components).
Past and present ecologies have come and gone: from Pondok Jawa to the Banyan tree. This third iteration by Chok is a eulogy to all the communities and ecologies that inhabited this space. It is a rumination on networks of interdependence, adaptation, and evolution.
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Chok Si Xuan (b. 1998, Singapore) is an installation-based artist interested in cybernetics and how post-human industrial cultures shape the way contemporary society understands itself. Chok often conducts material investigations into familiar and unfamiliar territories, experimenting with different methods of production and installation to explore the proxy effects of materials and transgress the symbolic order.
She has worked with institutions such as the Singapore Art Museum and National Library Singapore, as well as independent and commercial art spaces such as starch and Yeo Workshop. She has also participated in interdisciplinary projects providing creative and conceptual guidance as well as technical assistance.
VINES evokes the ruins and the banyan tree as a metaphor for community and ecology. But it moves from metaphor to creation. The constructed installation repeats and reproduces the appearance and biological processes of the former banyan tree. The mild steel branches rust, resembling roots; intermittent sprinkles of water enliven a natural habitat, powered by the sun (through solar components).
Past and present ecologies have come and gone: from Pondok Jawa to the Banyan tree. This third iteration by Chok is a eulogy to all the communities and ecologies that inhabited this space. It is a rumination on networks of interdependence, adaptation, and evolution.
***
Chok Si Xuan (b. 1998, Singapore) is an installation-based artist interested in cybernetics and how post-human industrial cultures shape the way contemporary society understands itself. Chok often conducts material investigations into familiar and unfamiliar territories, experimenting with different methods of production and installation to explore the proxy effects of materials and transgress the symbolic order.
She has worked with institutions such as the Singapore Art Museum and National Library Singapore, as well as independent and commercial art spaces such as starch and Yeo Workshop. She has also participated in interdisciplinary projects providing creative and conceptual guidance as well as technical assistance.
Artist:
Chok Si Xuan
Sculpted mild steel rods, solar panels, microcontrollers, mist and atomizers, water
Dimensions Variable
Chok Si Xuan
Sculpted mild steel rods, solar panels, microcontrollers, mist and atomizers, water
Dimensions Variable