I think holding you near the kitchen light wouldn't be so bad (2024)

I think holding you near the kitchen light wouldn’t be so bad (2024) is an exploration of how
human intimacy can be visually located in object language. 
Through quiet searches of love through object-to-object relations, romantic ‘sculptures’ are identified within everyday spaces and close readings of the inanimate are formed. This work posits how objects, when recontextualised and stripped of their technical functions, could potentially inhabit signs of human likeness, and as a result represent a radical, liberated model of love in how they relate to one another.
This work was showcased as part of NTU ADM's Photography Graduation Show, out of habit (2024),
at ArtSpace@Helutrans. 
Text:


i think holding you near the kitchen light
wouldn’t be so bad. to gift you this fruit
in quarters. mouthing words into the
heart of your palm. glimpsing the back of
your stiffened collar, damp with sweat. let me make this
right for you but i do think these words 
will not be enough to hold us both. catching you
align shoes by the doorway shelf the dishes count the 
one dollar coins in your two-year collection and
could we make the grocery list together? let us
piece together the month’s worth of cold as we 
fish for bleached shadows sinking between us. 
eyes glimpsing your tepid tenderness as we
shatter upon touch. hushed words pulsing pressing 
flat against my tongue. you wash yesterday’s dishes by the sink 
and my heels hurt from the bareness of it all. this room is
packed too tight swelling in summer heat but maybe i care
too little too much to give it all up. remember to bring
an umbrella out and i wish we could stretch this breath have the
first train take us away. my years are shedding off me 
my lips smothered smooth my flesh all palmed dry and i don’t think i’ll 
ever long this much again so let us watch how the sun 
touches a cloud, how a horizon line shifts, as we
wait for the rain to fall.