When it comes to the construction of a national identity, a flower is selected to engender national pride. In 1981, Singapore honours Miss Agnes Joaquim, the first woman in the world to have created a hybrid in her garden in 1893, by picking her, the Vanda Miss Joaquim as an emblem for the nation state. However with The Garden City having evolved into A City in a Garden, the hybrid’s role, alongside the surrounding flora and fauna, transformed from one of being part of the city to one is relegated to the fringes, clinging on against the inevitable construction which have consumed the skyline. It is pushed out, redefined, reconstructed, manicured, and virtualised. What survives is a memory of a construct, a representation drawn from representation, rotating indefinitely in the abyss of reconstruction, performing naturalness. 

Constructing Mementos: Nation States I & II is presented at Greyscale! at Art Porters Gallery, Singapore. It expands notions of the constructions of true and false memory from False Truths (2020) which was presented by Art Porters Gallery for SEA Focus 2020 during Singapore Art Week. Digital animation is made in collaboration with CGI specialist Alex Scollay.