let lemons be angry

I skipped my management lecture to help Jane Lee in the Biennale. Brainless decision when you weigh the two. I wasn't really needed but I was happy just to see her work (and it is some seriously cool work) in an unfinished state, with all the scaffolding up and her at the top focused and working.

I was dying to take photos, but I imagined jane and her family turning round to stare at me as my camera whizzed and snapped, and decided no. I'm a privileged volunteer, not a web reporter. I would love to show you what my peasant eyes have beheld this glorious day, but i will have to wait till the biennale opens, like the rest of Singapore.

It takes up a two-storeyed wall in City Hall, the old Supreme Court. It looks like a giant fraying tapestry of layers and layers of colored and white yarn. But it's all paint. I can't even begin to imagine how expensive it is to make. Works like this in galleries taunt me because I want to dig my fingers in them but can't. But I got to paint!this work today, thrill of thrills for a see-and-touch person.

Jane Lee is a lovely and strong woman who speaks Chinese to her family and made an effort to appreciate my presence. I'd never have imagined how family-based and mild the creation of such works could be. Jane needs grey-brown paint. The sister takes the paint from the carton and passes it to the nephew. The nephew passes it to his aunt Jane. The man whose relation I couldn't make out touches up cracks on the other scaffolding. Mindblowing.

What's also mindblowing is that when people come to the site, they look instantly at Jane. There are about five of us working at the same time, but their eyes go straight to Jane and know that she is the artist. I knew it too when I stepped in for the first time. There's something in the posture, stronger than the rest of us, more determined, more absorbed by the task. I know that look, I feel it when I run around moving furniture and completing work. It's a feeling of focus that I haven't had in a long time.

All this has inspired me to get started on my own final year project, which I've been putting off for no good reason. I had to make a blog about my fyp, which my prof will check periodically, so click here for it.