The City Beneath The City
14 Jan–3 Apr 2022
10am–10pm
The Arts House, Lawn
Inspired by artist and writer Jason Wee’s short story, The City Beneath The City is a whimsical installation that imagines a fantastic copy of our island-city growing and building under our present one. This installation features an exciting collaboration between the artist and the design firm WY-TO.
In this fantastical city, nothing is destroyed; new buildings are added to the cityscape, over and through existing older buildings, creating a layered architectural form that still bears bearing visible traces of its earlier iterations. A familiar skyscraper in the business district now “grows” beneath The Arts House. The installation draws our eye to ornaments, frames and facade detailing in our local architectures that often escape the eye, or are near-impossible to study up-close. Now as it rises up from beneath our feet, viewers can appreciate the individual elements of some of our island’s best architectural designs.
As part of the upcoming 2022 Textures Singlit Festival, The City Beneath the City showcases the festival’s theme, “The Great Escape”, which looks at the landscapes of our fantasies, our desires for travel and escape, and our dream adventures. See if you can identify the building, visible from the lawn when facing the sculpture.
Jason Wee is an artist and a writer working between contemporary art, architecture, poetry and photography. Wee is the founder and director of Grey Projects, an artists’ space, library and residency that focuses on curatorship, new writing, design propositions and art. He is co-editor of SOFTBLOW poetry journal. His recent art projects include the Asia Society Triennial, the 2019 Singapore Biennale, and 'Curtains', by ParaSite Hong Kong and Rockbund Museum. He has published three books of poetry, including In Short Future Now and An Epic Of Durable Departures. The latter was shortlisted for the Singapore Literature Prize for Poetry in 2020.
WY-TO is a multidisciplinary design studio based in Paris and Singapore with a decade of built environment experience that focuses on holistic society improvements through purposefully planned spaces and everyday interactions. First founded in Singapore in 2010 by Managing Director and Head of Design, Yann Follain, WY-TO has since grown into a multifaceted studio in Paris with co-founder and Director Pauline Gaudry in 2012. Their diverse portfolio is enriched with each country’s heritage that has shaped and synthesised their design approaches in various creative fields. Supporting this is the fundamental belief that design must serve a cause. WY-TO was the director of Archifest 2018, was shortlisted for the President's Design Award in 2020, and was part of the Seoul Biennale of Architecture and Urbanism 2021.
