Chan Yi Qian

Rachel Lee

Chan Yi Qian is a student from Yale-NUS College majoring in Arts and Humanities. She has a passion for the arts, culture and nature. She enjoys exploring different artistic mediums, including augmented reality and 3D design.

Rachel Lee is a senior Urban Studies student from Yale-NUS College, currently pursuing architecture. Driven by the concepts of space and inspired by other disciplines like philosophy and psychology, Rachel has created numerous art installations based on the exploration of the human psyche, often contrasting emotions like hope and fear. As a poet who began writing at the age of 7, she also spends much of her time writing poetry that traverse society’s portrayal of the female body. 

Title

Refracted Memories

Medium

Light

Shadows

Glass Prism

Film Strips

Cloth

Cushion

Year
2021

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Artist Statement

Some of the most prominent themes from Benedicta Foo’s “Still Reeling” include that of nostalgia and resurfacing memories. In the memoir, films can be seen as a medium to which the writer associates her memories, with each movie still containing varied emotions of longing and bittersweet sadness. As the writer reminisces the time spent at her film club as well as the people who lived in them, we get a sense that an era has passed – as the golden light leaking into the corridors of her campus eventually becomes tainted by the shadows cast by the inevitable setting sun. As we follow the writer through her recollections, we visualize a youthful past that shined warmly for a fleeting moment, before dissipating into a dozen bits and pieces.

To represent the writer’s concept of nostalgia, we chose a general colour scheme of muted yellow, orange and black. The artwork contains a total of 3 layers, with the top layer consisting of film strips connected via 4 film reels. A lamp shines above these film strips, casting shadows onto the middle layer, consisting of a film box which the audience can peer into. Through a combination of glass prisms and holographic paper, light becomes refracted as it enters the film box – creating a colourful kaleidoscope reminiscent of childhood memories. The bottom layer is a mini movie theatre made up of curtains and cushions, inviting the audience to view the shadows cast by the above layers from within.

In creating a layered experience, our artwork draws ideas from Freudian psychoanalysis by contrasting the conscious and subconscious aspects of one’s memory. In the process of recollection, we tend to miss out on the various emotions, ideas and thoughts that permeate our memories, which are often manifested in haphazard and incoherent ways. The refracted light rays thus represent the process of fragmented images melding together to form abstract interpretations of one’s memory and subconscious. 

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Writer

Benedicta J. Foo

Memoir: Still Reeling