Grandma’s Cubby

Grandma’s Cubby attempts to materialise a vision to survive within the environment – which at times feels suffocating and limited. Such an environment might be an over-crowded space with various things hovering between important and unimportant, traces of unspoken fear and trauma attached to things and spoken words.

Grandma’s Cubby is a replica of the small corner which the artist used to inhabit for a long time. Making various kinds of collections is a personalised way to create a sense of agency and a breathing space amidst the clutter and hoard, literally and figuratively. Organising various things forms a simple exercise to perform orderliness in the middle of chaos, living and dying.

I refer to the room as the Grandma’s Cubby, because this was how the space where my Grandma spent most of her days looked like. But this can also be the room of other Grandmas, elder figures, other figures, manifesting the impulses to observe, tidy up in a persistent manner, listen quietly, and tell stories without being bothered by the division between fact and fiction. Developing a cubby amidst the rubble represents the resilience to go on and the capacities to make use of everything including the discarded feelings.