My Tongue Will Speak. In Transition, Ion Gallery, Singapore 2010.

My recurring themes in art making include interconnected levels: free energy flow that is the deterministic continuum of time, the transience of our own existence and the temporality of life, and the inevitable process of transformation that tests our limited comprehension of the unpredictable, that leads to the final level of my internal compass through my relationship with God.
Transition is my own personal struggle, as I grapple with my identity gained and lost through living in different countries. Singapore as my new home for the past four years, I have made many new friends and acquaintances here, who speak in different tongues. Transience and impermanence are the reality that I experience as an 'in-betweener.' This process of personal experience finds expression in my art.

My Tongue Will Speak

I am raising questions about how, when and what we say, and how these words affect us all. The words from tongues can inspire, save and support, or they can hurt, demean and marginalize a person, not just here and now but across the generations and around the world. I made the tongues as metaphor for spoken words, physically displaced and separated from the body. Tongues in different shapes and colors represent the voices of different cultures in socio-political context. With great speeches, common dialogues, wishing whispers or screaming words, and with time and culture in mind, we may find ourselves at times more disconnected than connected.

The large resin cast tongue mounted on the wall above is a metaphor for The eternal Word, which is the reference, influence, and cover for the expressions of the many parochial tongues on the light table below.

Speaking Wall

This work is a maquette sculpture for a larger proposed installation for a site specific installation to be approximately 12 feet tall by 3 feet wide. The tongues are made of ceramic, and are embedded but protruding from a mound of sand and cement.

I am conscious of a timeline in human experience, of the words being spoken and built consciously and subconsciously upon words that were spoken in the past. This work raises a question about the exchanges between our individual voice and those of our collective voices, as they play out time and again throughout the changing events of history.