“It’s a difficult world out there. What if our world was softer?” It is this train of thought that led Singaporean mixed media artist Masuri Mazlan to show that industrial materials — normally hard, angular, rigid, dull, and unyielding — can actually be soft, likeable, and even intriguing.
Mazlan’s 3D paintings, sculptures, and installations explore identity politics, queer aesthetics, and the domestic sphere as a destabilising realm using materials such as silicone, polyurethane, and gypsum.
Raised in Singapore by his late grandmother, he says his inspiration comes from the country’s built environment and his memories of life here. He remembers his grandmother used to pick up and flatten empty aluminium cans for hours to sell to the karang guni man for $2 each time. “She would then give that money to me as my school pocket money. My body of work is a tribute to her memory, to how she nurtured and raised me into the person and artist I am today,” he says.
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