Rising Change is a three-part narrative examining adaptability, social structures and the possibility of change through the recurring figures of the rat and the bird. Drawing from an Asian tale in which rats transform into birds according to the seasons, the exhibition uses allegory to reflect on the cycles of contemporary life: periods of abundance and scarcity, progress and decline, conformity and resistance.

The narrative begins with Seasons, in which a rat transforms into a bird as spring arrives. As the bird rises, it gains access to new heights and the abundance of the world above. Yet prosperity gradually becomes ordinary, and its failure to recognise the temporary nature of its circumstances leaves it unprepared for the arrival of autumn and winter. As it falls back to the ground and returns to the underground, the rat is forced to confront scarcity. Rather than surrendering to circumstances beyond its control, it begins to reclaim agency over its own survival.

In Rat Race, this struggle becomes a confrontation with the systems that sustain society. Rats run endlessly on wheels to generate power for their community, eventually powering the surveillance cameras that monitor their own labour. The work considers the ways in which systems are maintained not only through external control, but through the participation and self-policing of those within them. The escape of one rat raises a question that remains unresolved: what happens to a society when an individual refuses to continue performing the role assigned to them?

The final chapter, Reclaim, introduces the bird as a figure that breaks from its expected position. Without the structures of surveillance and order that have governed the preceding works, the possibility of freedom emerges—but so too does uncertainty. Would a society without these structures become truly free, or would it simply produce new forms of control?

Across the exhibition, hand-sculpted and resin-cast works draw from carved Malay wood panels, Chinese painting, colonial architectural flourishes and relief sculptures found throughout Singapore. These visual languages become a contemporary form of storytelling. Just as architectural reliefs once preserved myths and symbolic creatures, Rising Change uses familiar animals to record the anxieties of its own time.

Mediums: Cast resin, wood, spray paint