Hannah Tan

Spinning Noodles, Weaving Culture, 2018

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Spinning Noodles, Weaving Culture came about when I was trying to discover the invisibilities in my surrounding culture. I was researching into the notion of tradition and the transmission of customs or beliefs from one generation to another. This work looks at rice noodles as metaphor for permutations and adaptations of culture. Rice noodle, a by-product of rice, embeds unseen generations of knowledge of our ancestors and traces of various local practices in it. It reflects the adaptability and resourcefulness of our ancestors with their limited food supplies in a given time-space. This work also explores rice noodle as a cultural material that is fragile and transient. Under a certain condition, rice noodles perform like glue that trace the forms of cups and bowls, bind and hold themselves together. At the same time, they also pull apart, crack or even break down.

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This work was exhibited at I.D. (The Body's Still Warm), 42 Cambridge Road, Singapore in 2018.