How does one grapple with death, whether through a slow passing or sudden loss?

"Dua Tua Har Berat" brings together two contemporary practices that refuse to accept finality. Tua Har Berat, meaning “heavy mourning” in Baba Malay, refers to the three-year mourning period following a loved one’s passing.

As a creole language shaped by generations of cultural intermingling, Baba Malay carries histories of migration, adaptation and loss. Like endangered languages that fade over time, memory and craft traditions are equally vulnerable when intergenerational transmission is disrupted. Rather than approaching craft as static heritage preservation, the exhibition foregrounds process as a form of mourning and translation as a means of intergenerational dialogue, where healing can emerge through the collective acknowledgement of grief.

Here, process is activated as performance, allowing memory to surface through acts of making. Glass-cut beads and 3D printing filament become vessels through which memory is sustained, while repetitive gestures of beading and printing echo inherited rituals and embodied habits enacted by those who are no longer present. These gestures operate as quiet acts of devotion, where repetition becomes a method of mourning. This exhibition also confronts the inevitability of losing unspoken histories held by our elders, due to language barriers between generations. Translation becomes an act of care and recovery, renewing interest in endangered practices such as Peranakan beading and wooden bird cage making. By reinterpreting these practices through contemporary mediums such as relational art and 3D printing, craft is repositioned beyond the domestic and private.

Through the public unfolding of mourning processes, "Dua Tua Har Berat" cultivates a safe space for collective grieving. In the living room-like environment of familiar household objects and fixtures, the exhibition gently blurs the boundary between art and the everyday. Within this intimate, familial setting, a dialogue between the audience and artist unfolds through gentle encounters — in quiet conversations, in handwritten or drawn offerings left upon a communal wall, or in unspoken words whispered into an unconnected analog telephone.

Grief is not positioned as a private experience, but one that can be shared and held through conversations, presence and material gestures, where vulnerability may be approached slowly at one’s own pace. In 饮水思源 (memories of our loved ones), a collective kinship record compiled by Clarisse, personal memorabilia associated with loss are gathered, allowing individual experiences of grief to be recognised and held communally, lightening the burden of carrying the pain alone.