Culture, known as the diversification of the way people do things the way they do. Appreciating how differences evolves around me makes me realise that the beauty of the world lies in the diversity of people. The way I have been exposed to a variety of culture in Singapore itself having a multi-cultural society alongside with the way I grew up in a multicultural school. Moreover, the differences of ethnicity my parents share gave me an opportunity to explore different cultures. The intention I have towards publishing these eight artworks is to enhance the idea of culture in these generations wherein almost everything is entirely modernised. Hence, in hopes to bring back cultural aspects to the community from these exhibition so that the next few generations are able to keep the cultural aspects that our ancestors have made.

At the beginning of my IBDP, I was only concentrating on the skills I have which is making realists works only with the use of pencil and paper due to my hatred towards colours, painting and other variety of mediums. However, I knew that if I were to only be stuck in the same medium, I wouldn’t grow into an artist that I would want to be. Hence, from there my teacher taught and led me ways through the use of mediums to express my ideas into forms that I’ve never thought of.

These artworks consists of my opinions and expression towards a certain culture mostly focusing on the asian culture. However, an appreciation towards a person and a culture made me have a special artwork dedicated to the African culture, making it one of the outstanding artwork in these exhibition. The expression I use for these artworks ranges from digital, painting, drawing, sculpting, punch needling, and photography. Moreover, the use of neutral tones is what I intend to dominate my artworks with for my coherent colour palette alongside with the use of realists style for my coherent body of work.

One of these artworks which strongly correlates with my theme, culture, and coherent body of work is my artwork called The Maiko. It is a digital artwork wherein it surrounds on a personal connection with the Japanese culture. It serves as the starting point of my artworks due to the way it portrays a start of my career as an artist in the IBDP. The way I portray this artwork is my face in a Maiko alongside with a cubist background in correlation to my artist reference, also portraying neutral colours to match my coherent palette. I’ve never been one who is fond in using digital works however I explored the use of digital by making use of an iPad and Apple pencil.

Also, Kartu Bahadur, I consider it as an opinionated artwork towards Indonesia’s national heroes alongside with a representation of Indonesia’s culture and the heroes’ culture. I explored the use of carving tools on linoleum to portray a realist portrait of each heroes alongside with Batik motifs as the poker card’s border. This is one daring work that I’ve ever done which put me out of my comfort zone as an artist.

For the last artwork, The Bagonjong, it consists of a combination of the modernised generation alongside with a cultural aspect to it, portraying that even in this generation, we are able to still make cultural architectures look trendy however cultural to enhance our ancestors upbringings. For this sculpture, I made use of a cardboard as a base alongside with white wall paint which I used white clay as the facade and the roof afterwards. This artwork shares a personal connection wherein I have Padangnese bloodline alongside with my dream to become an architecture one day. This artwork emphasise my purpose as an architect to create modern however cultural architectures one day.

For the past 2 years, I have learnt to be more daring in my artworks, which improved the way I critically think and work as an artist. I am in hopes to raise awareness to my audiences so that they are able to learn more about the variety of culture and not let the aspects of it sink for the next few generations.