“The Analogue Attachments of Modern Love”. Curated by Louis Ho. 39+ Art Space; Singapore. 2024
Unbosom draws from my current research on the figure of the Crone, and the lived experience of female ageing. Though there is much literature on menopause, very little of it has been written by women. When Virginia Woolf tried to bring menopause and menstruation into her greatest novel, Mrs Dalloway, these references were edited out of later versions. Before 2000, there was hardly a female voice writing about our experiences of ageing, and of reaching the end of reproductive life (Greer, 1991).
In Unbosom, I brought women's voices on these themes back onto the pages of Mrs Dalloway by inscribing in milk excerpts from Miranda July's All Fours, Darcey Steinke's Flash Count Diary, Susan Mattern's The Slow Moon Climbs, Victoria Smith's Hags, Germaine Greer's The Change, and many others. I then ripped out pages from Mrs Dalloway and ironed the pages individually. In doing so, the heat of the iron revealed the excerpts invisibly scripted in milk.
Surrounded by walls of personal data redactions by artist Joanne Lim, Unbosom inversely mirrored this work by inscribing a polyphony of intimate female experiences back onto the pages of Woolf's masterpiece.
photos by: Jonn Lu, 39+ Art Space