Home

In nature, shells are not only an extension of a creature’s most vulnerable feature (their skeleton), but also a home, a protection, a safe place. Sometimes homes or things that signify home can be lost, and everything, all its memories and importance, along with it.

 

The idea behind this series stems from the loss of my grandfather’s seashell collection after his passing. It was the most prominent memory that I have of my dad’s childhood home in Terengganu. Losing this collection felt as if I was losing some memories I had of the place and my grandparents. Also inspired by recent events that hit close to home was the floods in Shah Alam. It was extremely heartbreaking to witness the devastation of friends and families losing their homes and belongings to the flood.

 

Utilising seashells as a symbolic metaphor, where rings of keratin, like sediment, could literally be used to signify growing old in these homes, memories made under protective guises, I left the insides untouched to highlight the importance of it and what it once housed.