Tradition Is Young

The prevalence of Kueh’s in our society is slowly diminishing with the arrival of exciting and new foreign cuisine. As a result of this phenomemon of globalisation, the popularity of kueh’s has been in the decline as people are slowly detaching themselves from these traditional foods, while searching for the next new trend. 

I aim to reignite the excitement of kueh’s among the youths through the stories they carry, focusing on the visual aspect of these stories which carry much of the kueh’s symbolism and value. The visuals would paint a vivid picture, sparking a connection with uninterested youths as well as sharing the value and importance which kueh’s hold in our society. A series of new flavours would also be introduced to give kueh’s a fresh experience in contrast to the flavours which we have been used to. 

Urip Iku Urup – Life is like a flame

Singapore is well-known around the world for its multi-racialism which consists of a few main races such as Indians, Chinese and Malay. It is known that the Chinese race can be broken down into further groups such as Hokkien, Cantonese, Teochew, and Hakka. Though this knowledge is common in Singapore, not many know that the Malay race can be broken down to different groups too, like the Chinese. Majority of the Malay race consists of Singaporeans whose ancestry comes from Indonesia such as the Javanese, Boyanese, Bugis and Minangkabaus.

This project aims to tell a narrative of a family of Javanese heritage living in modern Singapore through the medium of Batik. Its designs are filled with different motifs and colour to represent the stories that were shared during the interviews with the chosen individuals from 4 different generations. A zine book will also assist in describing the information of the Batik and the video interview will aid with the understanding of the stories shared.

Rojak Cypher

This project aims to document the street dance community in Singapore to showcase how it is unique in these four aspects .

  1. Location and historical context
  2. Unspoken Vocabulary
  3. Spoken Vocabulary
  4. Short documented stories

Street Dance is a dance style that evolved outside of dance studios in any available open space. The term is used to describe vernacular dances in the urban content whereby the genre of the dance is broad. Vernacular dances are often improvisations ( Freestyle) and social in nature.

As a dancer myself, I’ve come to realise dance being a form of expression of the human intention is considered a language. The idea of doing this topic for my FYP came about while I was pondering on the idea of how Singlish, a local dialect was evolved from English, a foreign language. Similarly ,the initial philosophy and practice of street dance was something that was foreign to the culture here and was adopted by Singaporeans in the late 1970s and only started getting popular traction in mid 1990s . It is no surprise that the dance styles in Singapore has also evolved in a way that is localised. However a quick google search will show that street dance in Singapore is not being structurally documented and if so, it is rare. This is why this FYP is important to me as it serves as a platform to showcase a part of our much seeked after cultural identity.