2023. Turbine Tropics

Video installation, black collapsible crates
Two-channel video, (colour and sound), 11min

Prints: Render_TurbineTropics_01, and Render_TurbineTropics_02, 2023
Direct UV print on silver dibond, 800mm x 800mm

Presented by Yeo Workshop for Frieze Seoul 2023 
Graphic Design: Studio Darius Ou
Image Credits: Jonathan Tan

Turbine Tropics explores the impact of extractive capitalism and Southeast Asian plantation narratives. It investigates plantation corporatism's invisibility to the public, utilising monoculture industries as a lens for geopolitical dynamics. Integrating Homi K. Bhabha's liminality theory, Dia views rubber plantations as spaces of continuous transformation, caught between the natural and artificial. The work, through symbolic spirals and helical forms, critiques colonial extractivism and its lasting effects, embodying the tension between global forces and local ecologies.