About My Practice
Hey there, thanks for being here and wanting to know more about what I do.
I’m based in Malaysia and have been fortunate to work with folks locally and internationally in imagining visionary futures through illustrations, poetry, and theatre.
I’m really big on dramaturgy, and the questions I ask are influenced and informed by adrienne maree brown’s “Emergent Strategy”. I notice I struggle with my creativity the most when I don’t ground myself and my position in relationship to the work before I start. When I’m thinking of ideas, I ask myself who will benefit the most from this work and who will be most impacted? With all of my identities, what are my limitations and privileges I need to be mindful of going forward? How can I make sure marginalised folks stay front and centre?
Commissioned by Urgent Action Fund-Asia & Pacific (2022). The fishes in the background are the Redtail Butterflyfish who makes their home across our waters through Asia and the Pacific, which represent the regions that organisation work in. Each of the plants featured here are native to the Malaysia, Samoa, Japan, Kashmir, Myanmar and Papua New Guinea.
My way of practising emergent strategy is to visualise our futures and the movements to get there with plants and wildlife. Rooting the work in nature helps me explore those questions. Nature knows no borders, no policing, no prisons, no patriarchy, no heteronormativity. We are shaped by the environments that surround us, so what are the lessons we can learn from it other than the ones that we use to justify our supremacy and violence over the world?
“Nature has taught me that if humans don’t figure out what revolution really means, nature will make the revolution despite us.”
Making art is something I thoroughly enjoy, and I try my best to remind myself of that when I get caught in cogs of productivity and survivalhood in capitalism.