Path (2011), Philippines International Performance Art Festival P.I.P.A.F., Santiago City PH

My very first performance.

After experiencing two performances for the first time ever in 2009, I realised that I too wanted to create performance art, as it is a potentially very powerful and moving art form. During my travels to the Philippines to attend PIPAF, the organiser Yuan Mor'o Ocampo gave me the opportunity to perform, even though I was not one of the invited artists.

The idea for the performance had been within me for some time, even though I wasn’t fully aware of it. When Yuan asked if I had an idea of what I wanted to do and what materials I needed, the words came out so naturally that I surprised myself.

The piece, titled Path, is about the path my parents intended for me to follow, and the path I made instead. They laid down the course for me, and I even took the first few steps; but I could not continue. What followed was a marvellous chaos: a mismatch of decisions, impulses, desires, and experimentations that makes no sense from the outside, not even to myself, yet.

Photo Lim Eng Hwa