Fragments of unknown ground

Synopsis

In early 2024, five artists—Robert, Chun Aik, Lewis, Arrvin, and Xiaocong—were invited to delve into the enigmatic history of 116 Prinsep Street, the land on which DECK once stood. This site, left vacant since 1983, holds what might be the last physical remnants of Singapore’s squatter settlements—an old toilet, a medal, a comb, a toothbrush, a weathered shampoo package, along with stones, bricks, and tiles from before 1983. The works in this exhibition do not seek to reconstruct history, nor do they create imagined landscapes. Instead, they concentrate on the loss of history and the current vagrants that now call this wasteland home—the weeds, the crow, the life that persists in the margins. These artworks engage with the gap in history, addressing the failure to connect with a past that is both elusive and fragmented. The absence of official records becomes an invitation to explore how we might see and understand this abandoned land as it is now, in its fleeting, transitory state.