ila (b.1985, Singapore) is a visual and performance artist whose intimate works incorporate objects, moving images and live performance to generate discussion about gender, history and identity. Negotiating alternative nodes of experience, her works reconfigure and merge speculative fiction with factual histories, informal archives and collective experiences, conceiving them as sites for empathy and connectivity.
Her works have been included in exhibitions such as Proposals for Novel Ways of Being: An Exercise in Meaning in a Glitch Season and Time Passes, National Gallery Singapore and 2219: Futures Imagined, ArtScience Museum (both Singapore, 2020); State of Motion: A Fear of Monsters, Asian Film Archive; and Arus Balik, NTU Centre for Contemporary Art (both Singapore, 2019).
buang angin: throwing caution to the wind
Wind or air (angin, feng, or vayu/vata) in the body is a common element embedded in traditional medicine in Southeast Asia and Asia. The practice of dispelling or balancing wind in the body is an important part of traditional healing methods, but is also passed down through oral tradition within families. Unlike Western medicine which looks at symptoms as signs of possible illnesses, wind (angin) is regarded as a symptom of imbalances in the body that needs to be removed or harnessed through cooling or heating the body.
buang angin is a video work which navigates and mediates our personal and collective relationships with wind and the body. Responding to contributions from the public which gather their experiences of alternative practices of wellness, home-made remedies, and passed-down advice to prevent or expel wind, buang angin moves in and out through these different narratives towards other ways in which we can think about rituals of care.