Sam Taylor

Samantha Taylor

Singaporean-ness/Australian-ness

preservation of the Diasporic consciousness
through archival methodologies

Samantha Taylor surveys affects of the diasporic consciousness through installation, performance and text. The body of work dissects the discourse regarding identity politics—embodied fluctuation between Singaporean-ness and Australian-ness. The fear of losing culture, misplacing identity and neglecting tradition, catalyses frantic urgency to archive the mixed-race lived experience.

The collection of work examines how Eastern cultural practices may be preserved, within the context of Western suburbia. Samantha adopts site-specific observation into place: the domestic dwelling, alongside space: architectural elements and associated objects. She attempts to fuse Singaporean/maternal heritage with Australian/paternal heritage. This resolves in a muddled stance within the in-between, tainted with melancholic longing for belonging.

‘Collating Singapore: views through my iPhone.’ signifies collected memories— autobiographical recollections and familial anecdotes. The images were sourced from a smartphone’s database—a virtual photographic archive—and grouped in accordance with underlying narratives, for the viewer to decipher. Through collating digital images as an act of remembering, Samantha attempts to diminish nostalgic longing—homesickness for one’s homeland.

‘Home/Then. Home/Now’ surveys the relationship between inhabitants of the domestic dwelling. The ceramic bowls depict generational exchange of cultural knowledge, through having been transferred to Samantha’s household, from her mother’s. The rusted metal frames—remnants of reinforcement mesh gathered by her partner— signify the materiality of Australian suburbia. By weaving tapestries informed by the ceramic bowls into the steel frames, Samantha embeds the Singaporean female into Australian suburbia.

The performance ‘Singaporean-ness/Australian-ness.’ locates the figure as an archival vessel. Donned traditional Chinese attire signifies affects of ‘Singaporean-ness’—the unwanted obligation, as a white-passing’ female, to explicitly display and validate Singaporean identity.

‘Hidden Truths—guilt; trauma; doubt’ publicly reveals compartmentalised sentiments, lodged within the private self. The excerpts explicitly survey complexities of the diasporic consciousness through confessional language. The repetitive, mantra-like statements address the unspoken truths of the Diaspora.