Nicfoo works in the public sector by day and is an artist and photographer by night. His newest exhibition, the cheekily titled For Your Approval, Please layers pictures from Singapore and India (taken during his time living there), to beautiful and haunting effect. What's more: it isn't only photographs he layers. Each image in the collection comes with an original companion piece of music (presented here above each image). Here he tells us more about the ideas behind his high-concept collection.

Why was overlaying two images the crux of this series?

Though technically simple, there was a visual complexity it gave the final work, arriving at an effect that reminded me of the ancient idea of palimpsest. When I worked on this series in 2012, I was living in India. My grandfather’s death provoked me to think harder and deeper about who I was, who I am, and who I wanted to be. I then thought of creating pictures that captured how my present served as a counterpoint for reflection on my heritage. This technique therefore allowed me to create visual compounds of identity. And like chemical compounds, overlaying two photographs allowed me to combine two elements to create a new compound.

What was the process like?

I had to go through hundreds of photographs I took across the years, like sieving through a karang guni shop looking for gems here and there, before finally deciding how to put together these found visual objects.

Tell us a bit about how the accompanying music came to be composed?

Given I had a taxing day job in 2012, I could only use my evenings and free time to work on them, often with a single work made across days and sometimes weeks. In order to maintain an emotional/mood consistency, I chose a song from my iTunes library to pair with each work, and played it on repeat mode endlessly while I made the work until it was complete.

As I prepared for this exhibition, I thought that introducing music to the exhibition allowed visitors to both understand the original emotions behind the works. In preparing for this exhibition in 2016, I took those 2012 songs and shared them with an old friend of mine, music composer Clarence Chung. After various conversations, Clarence composed four original soundscapes paired to four works in the exhibition.

The title is a bit jarring. What made you choose it?

I have worked in the public service sector for six years. As part of working in the bureaucracy, it is commonplace to require various levels of approvals from superiors, and an oft-used phrase to do so is “for your approval, please”. Together with curator Michelle Neo, we thought it would be an appropriate metaphor for the ideas we wanted to share in this exhibition. Especially being Asian and Catholic, I grew up having to abide by rules both spoken and unspoken, constantly seeking approval from others around me and society. Hence, it was enjoyable for Michelle and I to cheekily decide to name the exhibition after it. 

Catch Nicfoo's exhibition For Your Approval, Please during its last weekend at Artistry, on through Sun, Mar 20. Find out more about the artist here.