What makes some of these local or global creatives tick? In this weekly column, visual artist and photographer Juria Toramae shares her favourite things.
1. Old maps and sea charts: I’m fascinated by the various ways people saw and understood the world and how that led to explorations and expansion of empires. Here’s a recent favourite from NLB’s latest map exhibition—a Jain Cosmography Map from 18th Century from India.
Notice how the merman, elephants and the half-fish half-elephants are in the surrounding water?
2. Pelagic Dreams: Since it’s much harder to access the ocean these days, I’ve been thinking a lot about the ocean as a womb-like space. This resulted in several moving images of metamorphic morphologies based on my personal documentation of marine species in Southeast Asian waters.
3. Body Snatchers: An exhibition on how parasites are more than just pests at the Lee Kong Chian Natural History Museum. The curation by Kate Pocklington, a senior conservator at the museum, is just exquisite. Perfect for Valentine’s date if you’re into that kind of thing.
4. Small Axe: This British film anthology by Steve McQueen is powerful, sensual and brutal all at once. There’s lots of music and dance as well which got me thinking how much I miss all that since the pandemic began.
5. Bird-watching: Spending the past two years mostly indoors led to observing lots of birds by the window. There’s a pair of oriental pied hornbills that would perch on a nearby tree every evening until they stopped. I was quite sad until they showed up with a baby many months later.
This is a photo of the baby that’s all grown up now.
6. Durian Cendol: Two favourites in one bowl from Beauty World Food Centre. Totally worth the calories after a sweaty hike at Bukit Timah Nature Reserve.
Once you’re done with the obsessions of Juria Toramae, click here to catch up with our February 2022 issue!
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