Reflection

This piece was inspired by the loss of a forest I would pass by on my daily walk home. Zoned as "Residential" for development since 2003, Dover Forest was home to 158 species of animals and 120 plant species, including critically endangered ones. A nationally debated decision by the Housing Board, 50,000 residents campaigned and signed a petition to protect one of the remaining secondary forests in Singapore's concrete jungle. Ultimately, however, the forest was cleared this year. Every day now as I walk home, I see ghosts of what once was: the bee-eaters and woodpeckers that used to flit by, the dragonflies and butterflies that hosted gatherings over the walkways, and the once lush trees, now replaced with orange barricades, concrete bags and barren soil. While deforestation is only one of many factors driving climate change, human negligence, and our governments' attitudes towards the climate crisis have remained mostly unchanged. Recent headlines have made it clear our current pace isn't enough -- global temperatures are breaking records daily, our oceans have begun boiling, Venezuela became the first country with fully melted glaciers, and species are going extinct in the background as we speak. I wanted to symbolically capture the ghost town that was once Dover Forest, as well as the universal feelings of climate anxiety and grief in the painting. As key indicators of species richness and ecosystem health, and being a birder, I knew from the initial stages that I wanted to decorate the scene with birds. The museum setting is meant to symbolise childhood -- a moment frozen in time and space, and a place of comfort and continuity. At the same time, it also symbolises death, a mausoleum of lifeless husks. The taxidermied animals in my piece are all migratory or local residents, such as the Malayan coral snake, or the endangered straw-headed bulbul that our country has been a stronghold for -- they represent wildlife lost to human hands and actions, like how an animal must die before it can be preserved. I wanted to use an Asian child as the central figure not just to represent myself, but also to bring out the inner child in the viewer, reminiscing about the wildlife that once was; a scene separated from us, in the 2D plane of the painting. This piece is meant to be poignant yet hopeful. While it starkly portrays the losses of climate change, the painting isn't just meant to be a portal to the past -- it's a portal to the future too! Progress can only come with systemic change, but I still believe that if we continue to put pressure collectively on our global leaders to recognise the importance of climate change to us, we can slowly restore our environments and the graveyards all around us -- let the ghosts that once were, be again.