Nurtured Streams: A Tribute To Maternal Bonding

Breastfeeding, particularly breast pumping, often faces societal scrutiny which can impact milk quality and infant health. Informed by personal experience and research, the study explores maternal stress’s effect on milk cortisol and infant temperament. An art installation was designed to portray the complex experiences of pumping mothers, fostering empathy and understanding. The project emphasizes maternal stress on breastfeeding and advocates for supportive environments, aiming to inspire cultural change and support for mothers in diverse roles.

Nur Amirah, an artist and mother of a 2-year-old, uses her experiences with breast pumping to inspire her latest project. As an interaction designer, she excels in environments that value iterative design and continuous learning. Her work merges personal experiences with professional expertise, reflecting her dedication to family and career, and highlights her innovative approach to creating impactful designs.

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My project, ‘Nurtured Streams,’ reflects the collective stories of working mothers who pump breast milk at work. Originally, I wanted to explore these shared experiences, but I soon realized that the most profound stories come from our own personal experiences.

While pumping, I often endured uncomfortable stares, creating a feeling of intense pressure. This stress isn’t just internal; research shows it can affect the breast milk itself, altering cortisol levels and potentially impacting an infant’s temperament.

This installation captures the dual aspects of motherhood—the nurturing embrace and the mechanical nature of breast pumping. The structure, woven with tubes filled with synthetic milk, symbolizes the biological processes of breastfeeding and the devices we use. These tubes create intricate patterns mimicking the vessels leading to the milk ducts.

To enhance the experience, the sound of a breast pump motor plays in the background, and the movement of the milk reflects the delicate process of expressing milk.

The colour of the milk also changes throughout the installation. This visual change represents the different environments I found myself in while pumping and the impact they had on the milk. In reality, stress doesn’t just alter the colour but also affects the composition, the taste of the milk, and the nutrients, among other things.

The cage structure symbolises more than just protection—it reflects the isolation and judgment I felt, as if locked away, even as I was simply trying to nurture my child. This paradox, feeling alone while surrounded by others, is a space that should embody safety and love but often does not.

This design accentuates the natural and essential role of breastfeeding, grounding the mechanical aspects of pumping in the biological reality of nourishment.

The shadow you see here, sprawling across the floor, is as integral to this installation as the structure itself. It represents the unseen weight—the societal judgment and internal pressures that shadow every mother who steps away to nourish her child. This shadow is not just a visual effect; it’s a metaphor for the hidden struggles, the silent battles fought in solitude. Just like the tangled lines of the shadow, the emotional and social complexities mothers navigate are intricate and often unnoticed. 

By incorporating this shadow into ‘Nurtured Streams,’ I aim to bring light to these overshadowed aspects of motherhood, emphasizing that what we often overlook is as telling and important as what we see.

Through ‘Nurtured Streams,’ I aim to foster empathy and awareness and to ignite discussions about creating supportive environments for mothers. This project is about empowering mothers, validating their experiences, their struggles, and their resilience.

Entangled States of Being

Entangled States of Being is rooted in the inquiry of the nature of reality, unravelling the connections and complexities of human experience and the relentless pursuit of meaning. Drawing inspiration from concepts found in quantum physics and Carl Jung’s theory of archetypes, Entangled States of Being metaphorically unravels through a non-linear narrative, revealing an intricate connection between life, perception and reality. At the crux of this project lies the question: do humans possess the agency to shape our reality, or do forces beyond our comprehension predetermine our experiences? As we obtain answers to such existential mysteries, we will reach a fork in the road where we have to choose if these revelations confound us or offer profound tranquillity.

Do Not Disturb

Do Not Disturb highlights the tension between humans and our built environment, and aims to be a point of reflection into how our spaces are built. Through audio-reactive generative art, the installation and publication features the symbiotic relationship between man and man-made—the purposes they serve, its successes, its failures, and how our future must understand the balance of order and the needs of the people.

Plastics & Me

“Plastics & Me” is a speculative installation that brings viewers into the lives of micro-organisms. Walking through the installation that engages different senses, it probes viewers to rethink about the idea of consumerism, and how their actions are affecting the marine wildlife.

When Memories Return in Fragments: An exploration into a “sense of place” through sensory memory stimulation

This thesis aims to explore the concept of “a sense of place” through sensory memory recollection. The interest in this research topic is based on my personal experience struggling to recall my childhood memories from ages 7 and under. With the passage of time, my ability to recount them seemed to become less accurate or vivid, almost as if the memory had been broken into fragments. This piqued my interest in further examining how tangible aspects of memories in a design, such as materials and finishes, can be used to communicate the psychological and emotional ties of belonging to a physical place.

As a person of bi-racial descent, my childhood was spent moving back and forth between Singapore

and a small town near Stuttgart, Germany where my maternal and paternal families respectively lived. As such, my childhood memories are scattered across these locations. These buried memories resurge when I receive sensory cues like familiar sounds or touch distinctive textures like the stuffed toys. These experiences with sensory memories set the premise of my thesis’ central exploration.

When Memories Return in Fragments is an interactive installation that creates a sensorial environment embodying the concept of “a sense of place”, through various tactile, visual, and auditory stimulations. In doing so, this installation aims to engage the viewers to experience the process of recollecting memories. This is created through a sensorial environment for viewers to experience how memories can be recollected, and triggered by different sensorial stimulations – tactile, visual, and auditory.

To connect with the origin of my memories, soil from both countries was collected along with organic materials and atmospheric sound recordings. The ceramic sculptures were made by processing the native soil into wild clay, and their surface textures were adapted from microscope scans of the organic materials from Singapore and Germany. The atmospheric sounds of nature recorded from these familiar environments add to the immersive experience. These soundscapes are reminiscent of my familiar childhood environments in Singapore and Germany. Interacting with the textures on some sculptures triggers different atmospheric soundscapes to play. This immersive experience asks viewers to question the simplicities of memory making, whilst a contrasting complex sensorial environment forces them to think about their own memories.