In March 2023 students from Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts (NAFA), Singapore, who joined us at UAL on a seven-week course, put on an exhibition displaying the work they created during their time with us.
Hafiz Sohaimi
For this exhibition, BA Textile Design student Hafiz Sohaimi displayed his work and portfolio inspired by skate culture and war time.
My design inspiration came from Southbank skate culture. I wanted to really underline the performance part of skaters in this collection, so there are a lot of different silhouettes in terms of wide fit and padded clothes. I even developed the fabrics myself; some have see-through parts and others are padded. It’s a juxtaposition between the performance and the design. After visiting the Imperial War Museum, I took minimal inspiration also from the war, for example the use of the number 3 in the design and also the hidden details you can only notice when you get close to the piece.
Follow Hafiz Sohaimi on Instagram: @hafizegcentric
Renee Yeo
BA Fine Arts Sculpture student Renee Yeo created a card game combining photography and poetry that could be tried out and played during the exhibition.
The title of my work is ‘The Start to Notice about Life’ and it combines photography and poetry. It’s kind of a card game where you are meant to match one to the other. You can start from either side, but the point is to match a photo with the text that you feel most relevant to it. For example, If I pick the poem Flocking, which describes birds flying together, I would then go through the photography cards and try to find one that relates to the subject, in this case one of birds flying. However, some poems relate to more than one photograph and vice versa.
Follow Renee Yeo on Instagram: @renaded
Poorvaja Seetharam
For this exhibition, BA Fine Arts Sculpture student Poorvaja Seetharam created a three-part sculptural series, painted with acrylic on transparent PVC and held upright thanks to a metal frame. The piece explored the divide in society and the issues relating to having societal casts.
My project is titled ‘Cubes and Hollows’ and it is a response to the division of people in society, the fractionalisation of communities and people and the adverse effects of the growth of a nation. The main topic that I am dealing with in this piece is castism and its effects on society. Cubes and Hollows is a metaphor: cubes refer to the structures that are created in society and I use a lot of geometry to speak about that. The hollows are the effected people, the narrow planes in-between the cubes. The paintings I did are all referenced from images that I took while travelling in south India. South India is my geographical focus when I work. If you look around the piece, there is also a lot of monkeys interacting with the subjects. The inspiration behind that came from these trips I took. I noticed monkeys being rabid and crazy on the streets, taking over buildings, like the parliament building, and I found that very interesting. It made me think of rage and then possessing the rage of people in the streets.
Follow Poorvaja Seetharam on Instagram: @poorvaja.sr
