The Edge of Shadows

 

Everything that we see is a shadow cast by that which we do not see. – Martin Luther King

 

At the edge of shadows, there will be light.

 

Our fears and miseries are like the shadows cast from the back of all our dreams and hopes. The greater our aspirations in life, the deeper the shadows. My works draw inspiration from the city I lived in, particularly in transitional spaces such as shopping malls, airports, train stations, and construction sites. Singapore is a densely populated city-state peppered with high-rise residential estates and an oversupply of shopping malls and industrial commercial complexes. Like many big cities in developing countries, it is a city under constant renewal and reconstruction. Skeletal structures for new buildings can be seen erected rapidly over the plot where the not-so-old ones were demolished. The dark shadowed spaces framed within the juxtaposition of geometric structures in a construction site with multi-layered scaffoldings and steel frames looked like a portal, a portal to an unknown. These imageries do not evoke real moments of memories but refer to an in-between zone of the real and the utopia; a baffling place where reality and fantasy coexist.