Waiting for the Elevator

“In pursuit of meaning and satisfaction, we are led to grant the aura of life to things and to drain in from people: we personify objects and objectify persons. We experience alienation from ourselves as well as from others. We best comprehend ourselves as social entities by looking at photos of ourselves, assuming the voyeur’s role with respect to our own images; We best know ourselves from within in looking through the viewfinder at other people and things. “ - Martha Rosler In her recent work, Choo seeks to reflect upon issues of social alienation and isolation through potential narratives in Everyday scenes. In attempt to reflect upon the function of the void deck in public housing in Singapore, the resulting image acts as a documentation of individuals ocupying the spaces. Incorporating documentary footage taken in various public housing estates around Singapore, these otherwise independent tableaus were spliced together to form an unravelling panorama. Each individual featured in the piece was filmed in his or her own discrete space, as the immediate architectural surroundings make clear, but every scene occurs in the void deck of an apartment block, with the disconnected footage then sutured together to achieve the desired effect. The composited panorama ultimately exists as a non-space; an accumulation of fragments over time.

Sarah Choo Jing (b. 1990, Singapore) is known for her interdisciplinary approach to photography, video and installation. Her work depicts identifiable moments and characters within contemporary urban society suggesting a plethora of private and often solitary narratives. The artist is concerned with the gaze of the flaneur, voyeurism and the uncanny. Choo lives and works in Singapore.