MICROBIAL PORTRAITS
Agar Plates, Bacteria, Resin, Photo Paper | Aug- Dec 2017 | Dimension Variable
Merging art with biology, my art encourages a rethinking of what it means to be human beyond anthropocentrism. Exploring the unique forms, shapes, textures, and colours, creating a paradigm shift through the portraits that I am creating.
By creating a series of biometric portraits, it offers a chance for people to get a closer look, and question human nature by revealing the relations between the microorganisms and the humans. And even between humans. Portraits is a representation of our own identity. Just like each of the microorganisms, each of them is different and unique in its own way.
Using nature and through transformation and growth of the microorganisms, non-visible will become visible. Finding out what makes these microorganisms so unique, which makes up each of us, the individuals that are so different but yet same in the end. Whose portrait then? Much has been said about xenophobia, but it still remains as a perennial issue in Singapore. Although foreign workers have contributed a fair bit to the survival of our economy, Singaporeans seem passive about accepting migrant workers wholeheartedly.
We often judge them too quickly, sometimes even putting them into a bad perspective, giving them unnecessary and harsh comments. I’ll like to think, at the end of the day, we are all the same. Each of us is unique.
Through swapping germs and bacteria from their phones, placing them onto an agar plate that has their photo beneath, these microorganisms will start growing and infest the whole plate. By layering different mediums together, the outcome may turn out to be strangely imposing and alien looking. A ghostly image that shows a spiritual quality through the compact details of the microorganisms over the faded portraiture.