Back to Blogsphere

Apologies for going M.I.A. for almost two weeks. Have been living out of a suitcase in NYC / Connecticut, where I went to an interview and visited my bro respectively. Many thanks to Ssshuang who hosted me inspite of her crazy 24-7 work schedule as a $$$-making i banker. Due to the inclement snow / sleet / winter drear induced non-stop eating, I only managed to squeeze in two cultural outtings.

1a. The Gates at Central Park

Managed to catch them before they got dismantled. Seeing them in person was a pilgrimage experience for me, who before this only got to see Christo's work on slides for art classes. It so happened that a snowstorm happened the night before, so I was lucky to see them in their full glory - I'd like to call it that, 'cos the installation had the perfect backdrop of a crystal blue sky and sparkly white snow to contrast the neon orange: perfectly complementary colours. Best of all, Ssshuang gave me a piece of cloth used in the work; she got it from a guided tour, and the said piece of neon orange rip-stop now makes my wallet its home.

[sorry no pics of my own here, I snapped away with my old skool film camera.]

1b. Ashes and Snow at the Nomadic Museum, Pier 54, Chelsea



This is a show that will forever be stamped on my brain with a red-hot burning iron. It helps that Gregory Colbert's large scale sepia tone photos were jaw-droppingly beautiful, but the truth was the venue (and the long walk there) was biting cold. A -15'C windchill does not prepare you for quiet art appreciation. Shigeru Ban's mobile structure, the Nomadic Museum, built out of shipping containers, large cardboard tubes and stretched fabric, would have been a fantastic idea had it not been sitting on the windy East River in mid-winter, with only three tiny lamp heaters to warm up the vast interior . There was a stunning film at the end of the spirit-moving photo exhibit, but if I had stayed to watch it all, my companion and I would have gotten frost bites and / or hypothermia.


Now, I digress from the fantastic must-see photos. The whole show I learned, took Colbert 13 years to put together, and his special-super-secret technique, where he uses a galactic number of teabags and the image is developed on handmade paper, took seven years to perfect. The result was absolute perfection. His pictures, where individuals are juxtaposed with elephants, leopards, whales, eagles and so forth, reminded me of endless legends, folklores, stories going back to the infinite past, the origin of man. They have a powerful timelessness about them that move people to their cores. The show left me in sheer awe, and I thought it complemented nicely with my current reading, The Life of Pi, where an Indian boy who is Hindu, Christian AND Muslim survives a shipwreck with a tiger, a zebra and a hyena on a lifeboat.

2. African Voices at the Wadsworth Atheneum


I've decided when I die, I'd like to be buried in a Ghanian Super Coffin. Ghanians like their coffins Claes Oldenburg-like; they blow up or shrink an everyday object related to the dead person's trade or life to a casket. How nice would it be to have a colourful sculpture that doubles as a visual epitaph; call it my last laugh if you will.