Safe Entry (Check In... Check Out)
2020
Acrylic and washi tape on acrylic panels, mirror, in acrylic cube with LED lightbox, 31 x 36 x 31cm
2020
Acrylic and washi tape on acrylic panels, mirror, in acrylic cube with LED lightbox, 31 x 36 x 31cm
As in many countries, during Singapore’s Circuit Breaker (AKA lockdown), we found ourselves in a situation in which an entire country’s movements were restricted to daily exercise and shopping for essentials with everyone but essential workers working from home. Safe Entry (Check in… Check out…) encapsulates aspects of my thinking during lockdown, anxious jumbled fragments floating together trapped inside a small box. Fragments of the Safe Entry QR codes that popped up overnight for contact tracing purposes; clouds viewed through apartment windows; half-remembered skylines of distant cities we were once allowed to travel to; the strangely intense dreams. It all started to seep in, coming together in a work that draws on the language of the new normal, in unprecedented times reflecting an unstable state of mind many of us experienced during lockdown.
