Jin's Art & Other Expressions

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Art

The Stoic, the Absurd and the Whimsy

The Stoic, the Absurd and the Whimsy

AS I HAVE mentioned, I enjoy the whimsical (read here on “Whimsical Why Not” and here). In art, it manifests as forms like the surrealist portraits in this project. There was no grand intent at the start—just a quick sketch of abstract facial features within a 1:3 rectangle

Sharini's 'We need to Talk' underscores art as language

Sharini's 'We need to Talk' underscores art as language

SHARINI YOGI’S “We need to talk” is a powerful exhibition. Its catalogue captures its essence beautifully, through both images and words—an artist reaching out to us, speaking at a profound emotional level through her work. Sharini’s art can be explored through four key dimensions: (1) It confronts

Claustrophobia

Claustrophobia

CONCEPTUALLY, this is a very old painting – 50 years, from 1975. I was thinking then about solipsism. In a way, the phenomenon traps the mind like a pickle in a bottle, an “achar”, fermenting, transforming within its confined limitations but remaining essentially the same. Claustrophobia mirrors this mental incarceration, in

Self-portrait in Fragments: Kent at Canterbury, 1973-76

Self-portrait in Fragments: Kent at Canterbury, 1973-76

SOME 50 YEARS after I left formal studies in sociology and anthropology, I am finding the lectures and readings of those days useful in guiding my art. For example, I derived ideas on self-portraits in fragments from Zygmunt Bauman. Now I am exploring Claude Levi-Strauss’s discourse on totemism, part

Underclass

Underclass

TIRED BY the huge mess my old works had become, I sat down over a few weeks in 2016 with my former colleague, Jason Tan, to sort them out. First, along a few themes and then, to write something cohesive about them. Eventually, they took the form of four PDFs.

Waiting

Waiting

WAITING for others can be stressful, frustrating and infuriating. This is especially so when we have nothing else to do and do not know the length of the wait. There is, in addition, a sense of helplessness. Sociologically, waiting can be linked to power dynamics and inequality, wherein the less

Tenacity & hope

Tenacity & hope

IN MID-2023, Khoo Boo Teik, a close friend from school days, asked me if I could design the cover of his book, Anwar Ibrahim: Tenacious in Dissent, Hopeful in Power. It got me thinking about a few pieces of art for the cover. “Tenacity & Hope” was one of them.