A Wallflower in a Garden City: Longing for Belongingness is a social-art-cum-visual-communications project that centers on the artist’s personal struggle against the chronic loneliness caused by her socio-geographical displacement in Singapore.
It seeks to investigate the idea that loneliness is treatable, if not curable, through a mindful approach towards adventurous social experiences. Loneliness entraps minds in pessimism; to shed the negative presumptions, it might be necessary to confront the anxiety and challenge the established self-norms and conventions. The artist embarks on a restorative journey that carries her away from comfort, deliberately involving herself in prolonged interactions with strangers to rediscover her social potency and, along with it, the sense of belongingness.
It seeks to investigate the idea that loneliness is treatable, if not curable, through a mindful approach towards adventurous social experiences. Loneliness entraps minds in pessimism; to shed the negative presumptions, it might be necessary to confront the anxiety and challenge the established self-norms and conventions. The artist embarks on a restorative journey that carries her away from comfort, deliberately involving herself in prolonged interactions with strangers to rediscover her social potency and, along with it, the sense of belongingness.
To challenge her social boundaries, the artist set up a challenge for herself: to interact with 99 strangers. And it could not just be any interaction—there had to be a system and a visual rhythm to it. Deriving an inspiration from the urban expression 'wallflower'—often used to describe an individual who preferred to shelter themselves from social interactions—the artist settled on using flowers as the key visual element.
The system is as follows: the artist would come up to a stranger and sit them down in her 'Wallflower Booth', where she would then proceed to teach them, step-by-step, to fold a petal-shaped modular origami. This simple act of folding—a common activity shared between the artist and the stranger—became a breeding ground for serendipitous interaction, unexpected conversation, and, with any luck, deeper connection.
The system is as follows: the artist would come up to a stranger and sit them down in her 'Wallflower Booth', where she would then proceed to teach them, step-by-step, to fold a petal-shaped modular origami. This simple act of folding—a common activity shared between the artist and the stranger—became a breeding ground for serendipitous interaction, unexpected conversation, and, with any luck, deeper connection.
The artist would then connect the finished pieces of origami. Five petals become one flower. By the end of the project, the artist had accumulated one hundred petals from one hundred strangers, all of which were conjoined into twenty flowers.
One could see the flowers themselves as a metaphor for social connection.
The piece of unfolded origami paper, plain and callow and disconnected as it is, is what a lonely person would believe themselves to be. The paper is coarse and textured, just a little bit hard to fold, and the folding process is not necessarily effortless, either. It gets increasingly complicated, and by the last step, one has to exert some energy in order to fold the final crease. All of this serves as a parable to our social interconnectivity: with enough effort and persistence, we can eventually achieve the ability to connect with others, though it is not by any means a walk in the park.
Each origami petal boasts a slew of little quirks and imperfections, courtesy of the exquisitely singular human touch that gave birth to its existence, but as they connect with and into one another other, they turn into something lovelier, something gracious and beautiful in all their combined personalities. Perfect full blooms.
