Xiao Peng

See You Tomorrow (2022)

Textiles, batting, thread

See You Tomorrow is a work from a sketch made by one of the local builders of longhouses in the Bidayuh community during a field trip in Sarawak. Accordingly, the construction of a longhouse involves establishling the plan that identifies its bamboo and wooden floorings. Underlying the building tradition is a thought process for expansion. The longhouses can be elongated for another family if they come by. It is simply conceive to accomodate everyone. Today, the traditional longhouse is a threatened typology, many of them have disappeared, and the local culture is slowly becoming transient for the local community of indigenous inhabitants.

Using textiles found in the local market in Sarawak, the work recomposes them working from the original sketch (from the local Bidayuh) as a starting point. What follows is a working process that expresses solidarity with the local community of people; it serves as a conduit to think about the locals’ aspirations for modernisation on the one hand and the prolongation of local knowledge on the other.

Born in Singapore, Xiao Peng started out as a documentary filmmaker. He has since broadened his practice to include the field of visual arts as an extended way to explore the documentary form and its relationship to art-making. He recognises the importance of developing new understandings of localised forms through the process of engagement, interrogating our perception of difference, and challenging fixed identities in our highly industrialised nation.

He conducts immersions in a site community and often considers people and situations as part of the artistic medium and material in his art-making process. As a result, his work often takes on different iterations with varying forms and formats at different sites and spaces.