By Choy Myn

[Image: Me in front of my SOTA graduating exhibition, which was one of the happiest days of my life!]

Hello everyone! My name is Choy Myn and I am currently a CFA Arts Ambassador.

Before becoming a CFA Ambassador, or even an NUS student, I graduated from the School of tha Arts (SOTA), specialising in Visual Arts. After going through the process of creating my graduating exhibition, I realised that I didn’t really fancy the idea of becoming an artist. However, I wanted to continue using my skills and knowledge for public service.

Furthermore, as my aptitude and appreciation for history became increasingly apparent, my resolve to pursue an interdisciplinary career in Singapore’s GLAM (gallery, library, archive or museum) industries strengthened considerably. As these local industries are very small and niche, I knew that I needed relevant experience to make my ambition a reality. Hence, I identified the CFA Ambassadorship as the first stepping-stone towards my goal.

My First Project

The first assignment of my ambassadorship was to create a programme for the HERE! Arts Carnival 2020. The carnival is an event held at the start of each school year to welcome freshmen and connect the NUS community with each other. This was particularly challenging as COVID-19 had hit Singapore and we were entering the circuit breaker.

During the circuit breaker period, NUS Staff had remained readily responsive to my queries and challenges. I appreciated this greatly and wanted to create an artwork to demonstrate my gratitude towards them for keeping the university running and by extension, their efforts in rebuilding society. To me, they were NUS Heroes and I knew I was not alone in thinking so.

Thus, the artwork had to be representative of the NUS Community coming together to thank them and hence I embarked on a collaborative artwork project. Inspired by the tessellated nature of the origami sculpture, I chose the shape of phoenix, a symbol of rebirth, to commemorate these NUS Heroes. Following similar origami instructions, I made some tweaks to design my own modular sculpture.

Here you can see my prototype, built from 100 smaller triangles to the shape of what was to become the sculpture, Rebirth.

We then reached out to the NUS Community and the response was phenomenal. Each individual piece of the sculpture was made out of thank-you notes sent in by NUS staff and students. Without the effort of more than 200 people sending in their contributions by physical mail, e-mail or on the message boards, such an artwork could have been impossible to build.

Collaborating with Others

One of the most interesting parts of my experience was the opportunity to collaborate with many different levels of people from NUS.

In CFA, I worked with the Talent Development and Programming (TDP) team to ideate the project and prepare logistics for building the sculpture. It wasn’t easy creating the life-size sculpture from the module, for example, the copier paper used for the model, and subsequently Rebirth, was not strong enough in holding up a larger sculpture. The TDP team helped me identify and procure materials to fix such issues, like the support brackets holding up the structure. Furthermore, they also helped me figure out how to display the sculpture and a plinth and explanatory sticker for its showcase.

To bring awareness to the project, I worked with CFA’s Marketing Communications team to build the narrative. The team also helped me get connected with the NUS Office of Communications, the NUS President and NUS Provost, who supported my efforts by rallying the staff and students of NUS. I also got a chance to present my project on NUS OK! I truly believe that the project would not have reached the level of awareness and participation as it did without the support of the NUS leadership.

Additionally, I also worked with CFA’s arts excellence groups like nuSTUDIOS Film Productions, who transformed my video storyboards into the final video you can view here of my journey, I am especially grateful to Arjun Kumar for the patience and understanding demonstrated despite the multiple edits and tight deadlines.

The Ambassadorship brought me in contact with all these people, their abilities and talents which I might otherwise have missed out on. As social distancing measures continue to be enforced, the sculpture is all the more meaningful, as the emotional connection and relationship inherent to collaboration becomes all the more crucial.

Supporting Performances

My Ambassadorship has also given me the opportunity to be a part of other performing arts events, especially those of a unique nature, like online theatre. For example, on PANTANG, an online theatre production about Singapore ghost stories, I managed audience entry and queries during the event, and had an illuminating glimpse on how filming and theatre productions worked.

One of the more memorable moments occurred while staying on campus at 11pm at night, and the cameras mysteriously malfunctioned near the production’s end despite being fine for the rehearsals. That was very spooky!

Writing for CFA

Currently, I write articles for the Spotlight section of CFA’s website, such as this one! The process usually begins from an excel compilation of local arts, heritage and culture news that I aggregate every day and send to CFA staff and members to read.

My fellow CFA Ambassador, Tara, does the same for campus-specific arts-related news. Through these two lists, my awareness of Singapore and NUS arts events has increased exponentially. This awareness enables me to discover trends which subsequently decide the article’s subject matter.

Writing is an involved process. While writing the first draft of an article, further research is essential.

For example, in my Blindspot article, perusing NUS Chinese Drama’s social media feed and their play’s YouTube video and programme was necessary for me to grasp the plot and process that went into creating the play, such as the performers and producers’ background and how they practiced and altered their content to better fit social distancing measures.

From this, I can draw better connections with theatre happenings on the wider Singaporean circuit today. Other than widening my radar for arts events, the article writing process has also deepened my comprehension and appreciation of other disciplines’ processes, something which as a predominantly Visual Arts student I used to be unaware of.

Conclusion

In short, the CFA Arts Ambassadorship has indeed given me experience for a future arts-oriented career and great memories that allowed me to make a genuine contribution to NUS.

However, the biggest takeaway I had was the courage to put myself, a private individual, out there to experience new things. If you have similar ambitions, I hope my weekly Spotlight articles will encourage you to put yourself out there too.