2017. GOLDEN STAIRCASE

 
Gold foil, adhesive
Site-specific installation at Block 103 Jalan Rajah



The spaces encountered in Singapore’s public housing are bound to certain demarcations of ownership, establishing personal boundaries within the public realm. This site-specific work was an intent to explore, negotiate, and redefine what it is to constitute a communal space in a HDB setting. The materiality of gold, symbolic of transformation and preservation, provokes the banality of this quiescent, grey space. The staircase as a central feature dwells into Eliade’s concept of the axis mundi, a vertical cosmic pillar that links Heaven and Earth and centring it to the Universe. “Dwellings and archaic central situations utilizing a pillar can be useful as a means for communication within a community, mirroring the heavens and the sky.” Here, the staircase in the HDB space represents the cosmic axis as the naval centre of the architecture, enabling the elevation of a physical being within this shared space.