A Bout of Nostalgia
Everything I know Goes Away, 2019
The Substation, Singapore
"What is REAL?" asked the Rabbit one day, when they were lying side by side near the nursery fender, before Nana came to tidy the room. "Does it mean having things that buzz inside you and a stick-out handle?"
"Real isn't how you are made," said the Skin Horse. "It's a thing that happens to you. When a child loves you for a long, long time, not just to play with, but REALLY loves you, then you become Real."
"It doesn't happen all at once," said the Skin Horse. "You become. It takes a long time. That's why it doesn't happen often to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept. Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in the joints and very shabby. But these things don't matter at all, because once you are Real you can't be ugly, except to people who don't understand."
—excerpt from The Velveteen Rabbit, or How Toys Become Real by Margery Williams
"A Bout of Nostalgia" is a story of becoming. A tapestry of loaned and pre-owned chou chou, mementos, and personal objects—each worn by time, each stitched with memories; each Real.
Some of these stories are lost; leaving behind but hints of past lives: a scuff across a plastic nose, a patch of purple fur trimmed off a belly. Some stories are still to be written; perhaps one day a chou chou* here will be passed down to a beloved son or daughter, destined to be treasured all over again, like Skin Horse. Once pristine and characterless, but with time, slowly and unremarkably, these items have become witnesses to a life lived—from seeing an owner through a difficult time, to offering comfort in the darkness of night. They kept us company as we ourselves were becoming.
Lost or unfinished, the space is imbued with Real stories; some speaking through materiality, some whispering in words of experience and personal truth. And some, some sing in tune to both, like these zines by artists and illustrators - A Whispering Campaign, Mightyellow (Adeline Tan), Noor Iskandar, and Wardah Mohamad, whose words, works, and worlds are utterances reminding us that stories are what we—not merely our nostalgic objects—are made from.
"A Bout of Nostalgia" invites her audience to spend some time listening, and perhaps remembering—a story about an object that is or was yours, which could also be anybody’s. A story that makes you Real, with hair loved off, eyes dropping, joints loose and shabby, but never, ever ugly.
