Animal Farm

This artwork pays homage to Singapore + Malaysia’s ‘older’ generation; they come from a generation where there were no computers, mobile phones or online banking. A culture where political and cultural tension was ever present, yet a time when there was never a shortage of stories and songs.

Most people lived in ‘Kampungs’, communities of wooden bungalows surrounded by trees, mud, chicken and livestock. Neighbours popped in and out; children played outside, and the smell of cooking was always in the air. Fast forward to 2018, and we have a global, affluent, efficient society living in vertical high rises, mechanically earning livelihoods, often locked out of their own nuanced, cultural + social narratives.

The overriding success story of Singapore has often come at the cost of rendering its founding individuals redundant or worse…invisible. Cheekily using George Orwell’s title ‘Animal Farm’, Ketna brings forth an allegory of sorts; a senior citizen reverie that invites us to enter the imagination of the three individuals in the artwork.

The seated couple look lost in their thought, and the standing man is wearing dark shades; one cannot quite read his expression nor his eyes. The building facades behind them represent a physical / aesthetic sensibility that is fading fast. One by one, as each representative pillar holding up our past comes tumbling down, we slowly become replaced by a caricaturized version of who we ought to be. Unfortunately, the ‘new’ world seems only interested in the external. Internally, we are all animals trapped in an orwellian farm!

Please note that each print has a surrounding 10cm white border.