Charles Lim Yi Yong

SEASTATE 7 : sandwich

Since 1965, Singapore has grown from 224.5 to 276.5 square miles through the movement of sand from various origins to its various outlying islands and coasts via land reclamation.

In what is a port city with plentiful ships passing through, one also observes the perennial and ever present sand barges – they tug along a superhighway for sand, the very sand that claims not to have a history, ghosts or stories—but it does.

There is also this other issue: this sand continues to move with the assumption that an inherently finite resource will be made to become limitless.

It is an alteration of the manner in which the nation, the governed and the state may be imagined. It is reminiscent of the post-geological: that this newly reclaimed land is not inherited, but proclaimed for SEA STATE from what was once the sea.

First exhibited: Venice Biennale 2015