As the name of this artwork suggests, 100 is a multi-media artwork consisting of 100 stop-motion videos and a soft sculpture. Following my current explorations of destruction and deconstruction to challenge notions of perceived value with time, 100 crocheted objects were made and then unravelled one after another from the same ball of yarn, finally culminating into a crocheted vase. Photographs of each object were taken in a standardized environment at each step of growth to create a stop-motion video documenting its process from strand of yarn to object, and then back to strand of yarn.

In the crochet process, it is usual to unravel hours or even days of work to rework a ‘mistake’. This adds to the labour-intensive nature of crochet, even if this additional ‘experience’ is not reflected in the final work. This video aims to highlight this intangible process of learning and growth by showing every step of the journey taken. In a single sculpture lies its embedded history and past self, just like every single one of us. It carries the weight of Time within its stitches, frayed and discoloured through its accumulated ‘experience’.

The 100 videos all start and end with a single strand of yarn, and concludes within a minute, all played at the same time on separate screens. Watching all of them at once warps the sense of time, compacting 4 months of work into a mere 60 seconds. Looking at the different transformations unravel make us realise that these objects have ceased to exist, allowed to exist in their ‘final’ forms for only a moment in time; with this I hope to invoke a sense of loss or regret, and the subsequent realization that Time passed is not a ‘waste’, for it is the change brought with time that matters. The videos also demonstrate how time is relative, and makes us question how we often try to quantify time and append a value to it.

Without a fixed plan in my head, each transformation was a response to the previous ones. Remembering how a certain stitch changed the sculpture, I manipulated it a little differently in the next. Looking at the 100 videos as a whole, you can see that they relate to the other transformations in the grid, and are sometimes evolutions of earlier iterations. The first 5 Objects explore iterations of the circle, by simply increasing stitches in a certain position; in Objects 61-75, you see iterations of the sphere, a nod to the first 5 Objects. While those transformations of the sphere might seem similar in a 2D image, they extend through different planes in 3D, captured by movement in the video.

Below: Compilation of all 100 objects

100: Vase

100, 2023
Crocheted silk noil and wool, soil from Cognac
18cmL x 18cmW x 40cmH

The same yarn used to crochet the 100 iterations before this sculpture takes on character and age over time, the multiple unravellings resulting in the painted portions of yarn spreading out from the core of the sculpture. The paint ‘marks’ certain stitches, and we see where it has traveled away from the stitches beside it, or reunite with them again in different iterations. This reminds me of chance encounters with seemingly random people in our lives, who leave an impression on us.

100 is an original artwork commissioned by LOUIS XIII, in collaboration with Vogue Singapore.