Showing at the Singapore Art Museum, 25 January 2013 to 15 September 2013.

Mirror is a two-channel video projection commissioned by the Singapore Art Museum for the President’s Young Talents contemporary art exhibition.

The piece was inspired by the artist’s visit to Bukit Brown Cemetery, where exhumations of over 3,000 graves are taking place for the construction of a new highway, cleaving the old burial ground into two. This bifurcation is also visited upon the soldier, a recurring figure in Boo’s cinema: one serves the present-day Armed Forces; the other the Malayan Communist Party from the past. Both soldier – figures are lost in what appears to be the same space. As the dual realities echo and diverge from each other, this short film collapses temporal realities and narratives, reiterating the point that our present and future are inextricably tied to our past, while underscoring the critical distance one might need to view history.

Here’s a preview of the President’s Young Talents exhibition: