Boor-Koo!
2020 - 2025

Presented as part of :
No Room. No Vacancy., 2025 at the Historic Hampton House, Miami. Curated by Serubiri Moses, K.O. Nnamdie and Madeleine Haddon.
Silent Hands, 2019 at Hayy Jameel, Jeddah. Curated by Rotana Shaker, Zain Al Saie and Jean Wong.
Breaking Down the Sun, 2022 at Mason Gross Galleries, New Jersey. Rutgers University MFA showcase.

Boor-Koo! brings together ongoing works developed across different capacities since 2020. The project examines the politics and strategies of visibility and surveillance, particularly through the intertwined relationships between bodies, objects, community, and the everyday. These works were developed as part of my ongoing research into the lived conditions of my community in Boon Lay, Singapore, where a significant proportion of residents belong to the working-class demographic. The neighbourhood is also known for reporting relatively high(er) levels of organised crime. As such, surveillance is markedly heightened, and the balance between safety, privacy, and autonomy is often precarious.

While light is commonly associated with notions of safety and security, there are also lights that illuminate some bodies more intensely than others. Hyper-visibility, then, may be subverted into strategies of survival, functioning to repel and shield, becoming diversionary tactics rather than mechanisms of disclosure or outing. The extravagant nature of these works is unassumingly tactical: drawing attention to their garish beauty while simultaneously operating as a decoy, masking their underlying intent.

The title of the presentation, inspired by the vocalisation of rock doves, operates as a metaphor in response to the frequent mass extermination of pigeons that takes place in broad daylight within the neighbourhood. Uncanny parallels emerge between dominant perceptions of pigeons—often vilified as persistent carriers of contagious disease, with their copulation constantly monitored—and lazy sterotypical representations of marginalised identities. In both cases, bodies are compelled to navigate and code-switch between guilt, shame, and desire under conditions of surveillance in a hostile environment. Are we truly helpless, or have we been made to feel helpless? Who gets to harbour dreams and aspirations? Is the idea of meritocracy a myth?