Project 04: Poetics of Time

about the project

To create a piece of work in any medium that expresses a category of time – measured / experienced / edited / biological.

medium

A fan-folded zine with several illustrated prints packed into a sushi bento box.

concept

The zine contains photos of booths from art markets I’ve participated in during my gap year before coming to ADM. The prints feature illustrations exhibited at those events.

This is a continuation of project 1 where I documented my workspace at home. For this project, I thought it’d be fun to reveal more about my workspace outside.

Each page contains a photo with a caption annotating the name of the event, location and date. The pages are arranged in chronological order from March 2016 to September 2017 where I had my last art market.

The pages are colour-coded according to month, so events within the same month will have the same background colour.

Compiling these photographs has filled me with this overwhelming sense of gratitude to everyone who have helped / supported / encouraged me throughout this journey so far.  It was really difficult starting out with almost nothing and I just feel so blessed to be able to do what I love, to the point where sometimes I’m not sure if I deserve this blessing.

category of time: measured

The element of measured time is expressed through the recorded dates of the events and the increasing variety of items displayed at the booths.

reflections

My original project proposal was completely different from this final outcome. It was supposed to be a TV head with interactive photos / illustrations about existence and the stream of consciousness. But some urgent family matters cropped up so I couldn’t finish it in time and had to change my idea ☹

Nevertheless, I’m quite satisfied with how this project turned out, but of course there is room for improvement here and there. Shah suggested that I include little narratives about each event to make it more engaging and I agree with that too.

It was quite fun binding the zine by hand, 10/10 would do it again ☻

This zine is quite a sentimental one to me. When I didn’t make it to university last year from forgetting to submit my polytechnic results, my parents were really disappointed with me.

What made it worse was when I decided to build this illustration brand and go to these art markets to get the name out there. My mum was quite against this decision in the beginning and often nagged about how working at MacDonalds would earn me more money than what I was doing.

But now she helps me out at events and she’s always so excited about coming up with new ideas on what we can do next for the brand.

I think being accepted and acknowledged by my mum is one of the most fulfilling thing that has happened along this journey, and that’s why I decided to include a photo of her at work on the last pages hehe.

process

Process: Zine-making

research

Research: Time-based Art

 

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