Blooming Heirlooms, 2025
Artwork description
Blooming Heirlooms is a series of photographed floral arrangements that recontextualises Victorian domestic rituals from Mrs. Beeton’s Book of Household Management within Singapore’s tropical milieu. Drawing from local beverage culture and bridging the “oddities” of Victorian etiquette, the series presents vintage drinking vessels used in the Southeast Asian region with floral and foliage hinting at iconic local beverages. Each composition captures the interplay of memory, taste, and botanicals that are part of Singapore’s cultural tapestry. Between the blooms, the vintage drinking vessels, and the beverage elements, there is also an exploration of how traditions—both inherited from colonial histories and nurtured by local tastes—coexist and transform, suggesting a sense of home, heritage, and nostalgia.
About the artist
Susanna founded @fahfahsaigai in 2018, functioning as an extended studio to further explore the intricate relevance and relationship between humans and plants across various industry collaborators. She also partners frequently under the moniker of @superplanter to ‘plant’ joy through transformed waste debris. She is part of @near, an art collective interested in building friendships that support creative practices.
She was honoured as one of the inaugural recipients of the TCC-LASALLE Artist-Curator Alumni Award in 2017 and has served as the artist-in-residence at Winstedt, LASALLE College of the Arts in 2019, Indian Heritage Centre Singapore in 2020, and the Singapore Botanic Gardens in 2021. Most recently, she has presented a site-specific botanical text-based work in Eat Play Love for Singapore Art Week 2024.
Susanna received her art education at LASALLE College of the Arts, Singapore and holds a Bachelors of Fine Arts with Honours from Goldsmiths, University of London.