2017. GOLDEN STAIRCASE
Gold foil, adhesive
Site-specific installation at Block 103 Jalan Rajah

.TXT ︎︎︎
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.

