| In a rustic house at 43 Binjai Park lives Tan Ying Hsien and his mother Mrs Nalla Tan. The house is divided into two sections: the one in which Ying Hsien lives in embodies his life as an adult in modern day Singapore—mountains of books stack both his living room and study, and medals from the numerous marathons he has run proudly adorn his living space; the other section, in contrast, is an almost undisturbed and fully preserved area with anachronistic furnishing which has seen little changes since the 1970’s.
Nalla, a prominent physician and feminist (as well as amateur writer, poet and painter) of her day, suffers from Alzheimer’s Disease and her condition has deteriorated to the point whereby she is a stranger even to herself. Yet, the memories of her past and her legacy are made manifest from her possessions in her house. Paintings, drawings, photographs of her family, published books and even her kitchenware, speak volumes about the vibrant life she once led.
Ying Hsien has made the painful decision to sell the house and relocate this year. Come August 2011, he and his mother will shift out and leave behind the memories, which inhabit and are embodied in this space.
Out of this family’s relocation was born the opportunity and desire to explore the themes of memory, space and embodiment. Through the re-staging old family photographs, we use Nalla’s personal biography and condition as the vehicle for provoking thoughts, emotions and questions about the larger issue at hand: Nalla forgets because of Alzheimer’s, but does Singapore society risk forgetting too in a similar phenomena of forced forgetting through the development of the landscape and destruction of memory-infused materiality?
Villa Alicia is a site-specific work that has been created in the family's old house in August 2011. Installations (photography and soundscapes) are created to evoke in the participants the range of emotions experienced by an Alzheimer’s sufferer as well as the abstract phenomena of how memory functions.
Memory is prone to change in the act of recollection; therefore, it is mutable. The faculties of the mind that supports memories are also prone to deterioration with time, age and disease; it is therefore fragile. Yet, all is not lost. Because of the materiality of memory and how it is able to embed itself in physical objects, we can preserve and reproduce memories ad infinitum through photos, objects and recordings. Through Art. |
