Shadow Tresses (2024)

Materials: Kombucha leather stretched over a steel frame, programming equipment, polypropylene, pins, LED lights

Robotics: Jason Harrigan

Sonic world developed in collaboration with Joel Stern

Exhibited as part of Hideous Replica at RMIT Gallery, Melbourne, 2024, curated by Joel Stern and Sean Dockray

This shadow puppet sculpture/theatre is inspired by Malay folk stories and horror films depicting the ‘hantu’ ghost vampire of the pontianak. Traditionally the pontianak is understood as a ghostly metamorphosis of a woman who has died because of male violence or during childbirth, and who returns from her home in the banana trees to haunt men who have wronged her. She is often portrayed as a seductive and terrifying monster who can only be tamed by a nail hammered into the hole in her neck hidden under long black hair. A manifestation of patriarchal fear (any woman could be a pontianak in hiding) and feminine revenge, she is also a politically charged figure, emerging in Malaysian and Singaporean cinema during times of instability and struggle. I'm interested in the pontianak in all her violence, danger and ambiguity, something foregrounded in the menacing laughter that often signals her cinematic presence. Instead of being puppeted, this pontianak is possessed, an automaton replicating life, but still belonging to the realm of the dead.