Toward the Next Step – PhD Reflections
As I approach the conclusion of my MFA in Fine Art at Central Saint Martins, I find myself looking ahead with clarity and a deepened sense of purpose. Over the course of my studies, my practice has evolved into a focused exploration of how stories live in the body—how myths, symbols, and cultural rituals are carried, reinterpreted, and transmitted through movement.
Rooted in performance, dance, and visual storytelling, my work treats the body as a living archive—an expressive site where ancestral knowledge, silent histories, and communal memory are held and reshaped. I am drawn to stories that have endured across generations, not only those of legendary figures and cultural heroes, but also the quieter, often overlooked lives of caregivers, midwives, weavers, and healers. These individuals, especially women, sustained communities through acts of care, resilience, and devotion—forms of heroism not recorded in monuments but embodied in everyday ritual and gesture.
These concerns have led me to a deeper interest in how stories and symbols evolve across time and space. I am fascinated by myths and sacred objects that speak to cycles of life, death, and rebirth—such as the transformation of the Buddha into Guanyin, the goddess of mercy, or the placement of jade cicadas in ancient Chinese tombs to protect the soul. These stories reveal how symbols like snakes, dragons, and cicadas have been used to speak of healing, change, and eternal life. Fairy tales, too—once told by adults and rich in complex meaning—continue to illuminate cultural values, even as they adapt and shift across generations and geographies.
Movement is central to how I process and express these ideas. I see the body as a container of memory and transformation, capable of holding stories that are too complex, emotional, or intuitive for words alone. In my performances, I often draw from postures such as the “Royal Ease” found in Buddhist sculpture—a pose that conveys stillness, sovereignty, and peace. Through dance, I seek to create a space where ancient memory can surface and be reimagined.
This accumulated research and artistic development have led me to a clear next step: pursuing a PhD. I am now in the process of formulating a proposal that builds on my MFA practice and extends it into a structured research inquiry. This proposed PhD will investigate how embodied rituals—particularly those rooted in mythology, caregiving, and everyday resilience—function as tools for cultural transmission, emotional healing, and social reflection.
The project will revolve around several interrelated questions:
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Embodied Knowledge
– How can the human body serve as a living archive, actively preserving and transmitting ancestral and cultural memory?
– In what ways can movement become a medium through which mythic and ritual knowledge is reawakened and reinterpreted for contemporary audiences? -
Honouring the Unseen
– How might performance and sculpture honour both celebrated mythic figures and the quiet heroism of everyday caregivers, whose labour often goes unrecognized? -
Intangible Heritage and Storytelling
– What roles do dance, storytelling, and object-making play in preserving intangible cultural heritage and keeping traditional knowledge alive?
– How can participatory art practices help communities reconnect with their own stories and reimagine them in new forms? -
Ritual Aesthetics and Transformation
– How do rituals and sacred gestures—such as the symbolic postures found in spiritual art—function as carriers of spiritual or cultural meaning across time and space?
– How do artistic practices rooted in ritual create spaces for altered states of perception, reflection, or transformation? -
Symbols and Material Memory
– What does it mean for a material to “remember”? Can texture, weight, or visible wear hold or convey cultural knowledge?
– How do archetypal symbols—such as the dragon, cicada, or mask—operate across different cultures, and how can contemporary reinterpretation reveal new layers of meaning? -
Transformation of Myth
– How does the transformation of myth over generations reflect the emotional, spiritual, and societal needs of the cultures that preserve or reshape them? -
Women, Caregivers, and Cultural Memory
– What roles have women, caregivers, and marginalised figures played in the creation and maintenance of cultural memory?
– How can their voices and contributions be amplified through collaborative, community-based art practices? -
Reviving Forgotten Stories
– What are the potentials and ethical risks of reviving suppressed, forgotten, or colonially erased stories through artistic practices—particularly within postcolonial, diasporic, or intercultural frameworks? -
Participatory Art as Research
– How might participatory workshops—such as Dance Circle Sessions—serve as methods of embodied research, communal mythmaking, and intergenerational memory-sharing?
To explore these questions, I am planning a series of in-depth interviews with choreographers and movement-based artists across Southeast Asia. These conversations will investigate how contemporary practitioners draw on mythology, memory, and identity in their creative work. The interviews will not only inform my theoretical framework, but also shape a broader understanding of how traditional gestures and symbolic movement can be preserved, adapted, and shared.
In tandem with this, I will develop a series of Dance Circle Sessions under the title Reimagining the Mythic Body. These participatory workshops will invite community members to engage directly with folklore, archetypes, and memory through guided movement and tactile materials. Each session will centre on a cultural motif or legendary figure and encourage participants to reflect on transformation—both personal and collective. Using simple props such as ribbons, fabrics, and masks, the sessions aim to create accessible, open-ended spaces where movement becomes a form of remembering, imagining, and healing. These circles will serve as a practice-based component of the research, offering insight into how cultural narratives can be embodied and reinterpreted through collective experience.
Having lived in Singapore for nearly two decades, I feel a strong connection to the stories and symbolic traditions of Southeast Asia. I am especially interested in regional narratives surrounding legendary women and how these might be explored through both scholarly research and community-led performance. The region’s layered mythologies, rituals, and oral histories provide fertile ground for this inquiry.
Pursuing a PhD represents both a continuation and a deepening of my practice. It will allow me to refine the theoretical underpinnings of my work while expanding its collaborative and cultural scope. Ultimately, I hope to contribute to the wider discourse on performance and cultural memory—positioning art not just as expression, but as a living bridge between generations, identities, and collective imagination.
At its heart, my work is guided by curiosity, care, and transformation. Through myth, movement, and storytelling, I aim to create spaces where people can feel, remember, and think differently—where ancient wisdom meets contemporary need, and where forgotten voices find new forms of expression through the body.