Three months before my exhibition opened at Objectifs, I read about Singapore’s Productivity Movement in the 1980s—a time when the notion of productivity seeped into corporate, educational, and domestic spheres. I thought about how ‘excellence’ is another word for exhaustion, how the pursuit of ‘efficiency’ reshapes the way we work and relate to each other, and the relevance of care as both a practice and an ethos against Singapore’s relentless pursuit of “world-class” status.

I turn to Instagram before going to bed. Within minutes, I’m carried across the world: to Gaza, where homes have been reduced to rubble, children staring at bombsites. Then Myanmar, where missiles tear across the sky like shooting stars that only wish to shatter someone’s tomorrow. I’m abruptly transported back to Singapore, where three activists are being prosecuted for allegedly organising a public procession in solidarity with Palestine without police permission.

I recently learnt a new phrase: “out of bound markers”, or simply “OB markers”. Borrowing from golf terminology, it refers to the (political) boundaries beyond which one should not wander. Once internalised, it denotes an informal consent to refrain from writing or speaking publicly about certain ‘sensitive’ issues or topics in Singapore. Like an ouroboros, one learns to swallow not only their words, but also the urge to speak.

As a Singaporean who has spent the majority of my time living overseas, I never feel adequate commenting on this country. Yet I wonder if this distance can be generative, a vantage point that enables me to gather strength in a space of unfamiliarity.

In this essay, I attempt to write nearby. Adapted from filmmaker, feminist, and post-colonial theorist Trinh T. Minh-ha’s concept of “Speaking Nearby”, it becomes a way to configure my relationship with Singapore and the people of this island—not as docile bodies of labour, but tender bodies of feelings, seeking to connect. Adjacency, as proposed by art critic Lee Weng Choy and theorist Tina Campt, is a position to embrace “radical differences” and to “revalue and redress complex histories of dispossession”.

To write nearby is a self-exercise in learning how to love our increasingly fractured world.

I participated in Chu Hao Pei’s project, Nasi Goreng Diplomacy: Myanmar/Burma, at The Theatre Practice. As part of his long-term research on rice sovereignty, Hao Pei invited members of Southeast Asian communities to prepare a version of their country’s fried rice.

“We will be using paw hsan hmwe.” Hao Pei said, holding out a small bowl of the aromatic rice grown in Myanmar. Slowly, the room filled with the uneven clutter of chopping, the pungency of raw onions and garlic, the warm, savoury scent of eggs frying in oil.

We assembled our plates with pe pyote, fried egg, dried fish, and balachaung. Hao Pei spoke about rice cultivation in Myanmar, about the Irrawaddy River that runs the length of the country, about British colonial exploitation.

“Has anyone been to Myanmar?” Eric, one of the Burmese collaborators, asked.

A woman raised her hand and shared anecdotes of her time in Yangon: the hassle of renting a SIM card, the warm and fragrant bowl of mohinga that woke her up in the morning. I remember the way Eric’s eyes lit up, his soft, gentle smile warmed by memories.

Hao Pei had told me, weeks before, that the collaborators weren’t comfortable speaking about the war in Myanmar. Their comments might have consequences for their stay in Singapore.

I thought about the headlines on Aung San Suu Kyi, the protests, and the country’s brief period  of hope. On my way to work from the City Hall MRT station, I’ve often seen groups of Burmese people gathering on Sundays, having picnics and chatting in the shade. I’ve never been to Myanmar, nor had I ever spoken to anyone from there before, but at Hao Pei’s session I felt a newfound closeness.

The Mandarin term ‘mò shēng (陌生)’ describes the quality of being unfamiliar. In literary Chinese, the word ‘mò (陌)’ refers to a path between rice fields, whereas ‘shēng (生)’ can mean that something is raw and uncooked. It’s also used to describe the act of growing and giving birth.

Mò 陌. Shēng 生.

To grow out of unfamiliarity requires more than proximity. It asks for another kind of attention, a different way of relating and connecting. Sometimes, our relationship with the world begins with where we choose to stand.

It was in Jatiwangi, Indonesia, that I learnt the rhythm of the earth being shaped. At the beginning of the twentieth century, the Javanese city was known as the biggest roof tile producing hub in Southeast Asia. I still remember the weight of the clay and its coolness against the day’s sizzling heat.

It was on this trip that I met Arie Syarifuddin (or Ghorie to his friends) from the Jatiwangi Art Factory, and learned ‘tanah’, a word that describes soil and land, and ‘tanah air’, literally meaning ‘land and water’—Indonesian for ‘homeland’. Before leaving Jatiwangi, Ghorie placed a small roof tile in my hand. “Take this! Then you will always carry a piece of Jatiwangi with you.”

Last year, Ghorie came for a residency at the Singapore Art Museum to continue his research on the lingering impact of the Temasek trade route and the colonial histories of the spice trade.

Warm and peppery. In the centre of an exhibition space at aNERDgallery, Ghorie stirred brown sugar into a pot of chopped ginger. I found a seat near the entrance and sat down. His collaborator, Sayaka Shinkai, passed me a small biscuit topped with a generous amount of mango jam.

“Where is Jatiwangi?” A soft voice came from across the room.

Ghorie pulled out his phone and zoomed in on a map of West Java. “Have you been there?”

The woman shook her head, “Only Cirebon. I will visit Jatiwangi next.”

Sweet and sharp. The ginger candy was still warm. After the event, Ghorie shared that “it has been quite challenging for me to strike up conversations with people in Singapore. People seem to be more reserved. So, I wanted to do this sensoritual to encourage conversations and exchanges.”

That afternoon, I learnt that certain smells bring you closer to someone you’ve already lost, that seemingly distant histories will continue shaping the way we experience the world, that the land offers all she can without expecting anything in return, and that some people carry, often without choice, the weight of what others have extracted.

A lingering bitterness. I still remember the taste of that ginger candy.

Before my Objectifs exhibition opened, some archival materials had still not been approved for display. In response, I set up a mini-reading corner. A place to think about what it means to thrive in Singapore’s pursuit of excellence. Visitors were invited to write their thoughts on sticky notes and leave them inside the books.

To my surprise, the notes travelled to the wall. A small constellation began to form, messy and unruly. On the day I was deinstalling, I went through them one by one:

“There is no Singapore dream.”

“Free Palestine!”

“Singapore’s new 5C shall be community, conversations, companionship, commemoration and Computer-TIME (brainrot-jk)!!”

I was struck by their blunt honesty. Over time, the notes shifted into an extended conversation, where personal aspirations became a collective imagination. The visitors pictured a future beyond the old “5Cs” of credit card, condominium, cash, car, and country club; beyond the markers of this country’s economic ambition. These notes formed a collective Singapore dream that was plural and porous, shaped by our relationships with each other and the wider world.

A few years ago, I met the Bandung-based curator Heru Hikayat. I asked if it ever got to him: the slow pace of change, the drag of being held within a circumstance, the frustration of feeling unable to contribute.

His answer was optimistic. “We will save the world. One exhibition at a time.”

I feel less certain. As my mind returns to ongoing conflicts and genocide, the cultural spaces lost and emerging, I can only accept a truth I’ve long resisted: exhibitions may not offer salvation.

Yet, I realise that when we hold space for each other, we find another kind of rescue. It’s about planting a notion in the hope that one day it will sprout, bloom and even cross-pollinate. The impact of such a relational practice is not measured by scale or speed, but by the quiet persistence of ideas and feelings, the way they stay and linger.

As I’m writing now, I’m recollecting all the encounters and conversations. In those moments when we sit next to each other, simply by being ourselves, we gradually find stillness in a world spinning out of control. Like an ouroboros, we will digest the words we once swallowed, and create a new language through which we learn to come close to the world again. This act of adjacency, attuned to the darkness of the present, is a language of hope.

• Tags: Issue 41, Lenette Lua, RMIT, Singapore