Final Product! –

It has definitely been a really fun and interesting semester with all the creative and fun presentations and group projects! (It beats having to take tests, duh!)

For our final project, we settled on appropriating the goddess, Yakshi. It was overall a great idea and it was definitely fun exploring how a voluptuous body like what Yakshi had, meant in today’s context and what were the implications of it.

During our final presentation (Whew!), we were posted a few questions and I would like to cover the answers in this post.

• Why cover Naomi Neo’s face, and why was there two covers?
  • To show the irony in how we perceive the body differently when the ‘identity’ of the person changes
  • We used Yakshi’s head imposed on Naomi Neo’s body on both the front cover and back cover in order to emphasise on the ambiguity of how the front cover could be a photoshoot of virtually almost any “Instagram-famous” female who has chosen to dress and pose this way. The lady in the front cover, in every way matches well with the FHM design and template, due to how she is posed and is scantily dressed. It is almost safe to say that “Insta-famous” ladies such as @euniceannabelle, @withlovevic, @charlottelum, @nicolechangmin etc.. have no issues with posting photos of themselves in bikinis on their instagram accounts. 
• How to identify Naomi Neo, and how to identify Yakshi?
  • Naomi : Tattoos and provocative dressing
  • Yakshi: Mango tree
  • Besides the idea of covering up Naomi Neo’s face on the front cover to explain the idea that this body could really belong to any Singaporean girl, Naomi Neo can be identified by the tattoo on her right leg. Also, she’s known for a video she posted titled “It’s Just Boobs.” As a reaction video to instagram users who commented about her provocative photo by revealing her side boob.

Overall, it was a really fun experience working with my group mates and visiting the Asian Civilisation Museum! During this journey, we had ideas we had to dump and to take on new ones and debating as a group was really tiring yet rewarding!

Thank you for viewing our final project: Yakshi X Naomi Neo! 🙂