Culture Shock

Culture Shock is an interactive, promenade performance art piece, at a preserved colonial historical location - Lamorbey House.

The piece explores the harmful effects of the model minority stereotype, and what that looks like in a South Asian’s woman’s body by delving into how the stereotype has autobiographically governed a lot of aspects of her life; academic, personal, political, historical and so on. It tangles with how living within the standard of those narratives became inauthentic, consequently causing internal conflict.

Culture Shock takes shape as a tour of the glorified, colonial building, with a sanitised script enforced by the status quo and embodied by a European authority figure. Within the show, there is an attempt at cleansing the damage in a physical and mental format. The reclamation of that space, noise, power, story, in a geographical context that was built upon the ancestral suffering, and reaffirmed by present day suffering, is a critical and vulnerable turning point in the show. It represents another step towards dismantling racism and sexism, on a personal and communal level.

Breaking out of the oppressive system takes her blood, paper, heartbeats, new scripts, allyship, reclamation of certain cultural roots and defiance in the face of fear, so that she, in all her fusion and authenticity, can give the true tour of the colonial building and redefine who she allows herself to be despite others expectations and limitations - and how in general, people can only do that, when there is a proactive ‘showing up’ for each other, even through difference.

Culture Shock was first presented in May 2023, as part of the inaugural Grab the Mic Festival.

Take a moment to wear my eyes, and see if you can piece together the chaotic puzzle of what it means to be. 

Culture Shock: the feeling of disorientation experienced by someone when they are suddenly subjected to an unfamiliar culture, way of life, or set of attitudes.

I promise it’ll be messy.