The central structure of the installation is a crumbling cabinet made of stacked wooden boxes, which both harks back to the concept of a cabinet of curiosities and challenges the colonial approaches to collection and categorization that are associated with it.

Within this structure, 12 screens show various creatures visiting a watering hole in the form of an abandoned dustbin. They are interspersed with various objects from the forest that serve as reminders of human history. Collected during the artist's research or discovered as physical traces entangled with exposed roots, the footage and objects speak to transformations over time within a place, and the endless reconstitution of the forest.

Through destabilizing colonial narratives of control over nature, Trash Stratum imagines more fluid relationships between the human and nonhuman and reminds us of our entangled existence.


A selection of objects and items found on and around Queen’s Own Hill:

• Videos from a six-year survey on the eastern side of the hill
• A samsu (DIY illicit liquor) vessel, 1950s
• Alcohol bottles, 1930s to 1980s
• A fragment of flowerpot found at 2m depth, 1940s
• Fragments and glass found underneath a fallen Albizia tree, 1950s
• Images of former British officers during their stay in Gillman Barracks, 1940s–1950s
• A photograph of deforestation at Queen’s Own Hill, 1910s
• Photographs of rubber plantations around Queen’s Own Hill, 1880s–1910s
• Glass and ceramic shards from a 2m-deep open pit
• A fragment of a rubber cup used for rubber collection, 1900s
• A fragment of a sake cup used by the Japanese Imperial Army, 1930s
• Fragments of medicinal bottles issued to the Japanese Imperial Army, 1940s
• Fragments of alcohol bottles issued to the Japanese Imperial Army, 1940s
• Fragments of ceramics from England and Scotland, most likely belonging to British Soldiers, 1920s–1950s
• Fallen bird nests found on the road near the hill
• Fragments of bricks from a British Military Barracks built in 1935, demolished in the late 1990s. The bricks have been worn down by running water from a drain, which used to be a stream.
• Alcohol bottles discarded by a vagrant living in the forest, laid in neat rows, 1990s
• Soda glass bottles from Singapore, 1960s


List of species observed in a Gillman Forest, a one-hectare secondary forest in Singapore, from a single random spot measuring 1 square metre behind an old colonial building, between 2016 and 2022:

• Smooth-coated Otter
• Crab-eating Macaque
• Common Tree shrew
• Plantain Squirrel
• Reticulated Python
• Cobra
• Painted Bronzeback
• Oriental Whip Snake
• Water Monitor
• Clouded Monitor
• Common Sun Skink
• Buffy Fish Owl
• Collared Scops Owl
• Black Bittern
• Von Schrenck’s Bittern
• Malayan Night Heron
• Black-crowned Night Heron
• Red-legged Crake (Breeding)
• White breasted Waterhen (Breeding)
• Common Kingfisher
• Collared Kingfisher
• White-throated Kingfisher
• Orange-headed Thrush
• Black-throated Laughing Thrush
• Red-billed Blue Magpie
• Japanese Sparrowhawk
• Changeable Hawk-eagle
• Oriental Honey Buzzard
• Brahminy Kite
• White-bellied Fish Eagle
• Brown-chested Jungle Flycatcher
• White-rumped Shama
• Siberian Blue Robin
• Greater Coucal
• Red-whiskered Bulbul
• Large-tailed Nightjar
• Straw-headed Bulbul
• Asian Koel
• Yellow-rumped Flycatcher
• Crow-billed Drongo
• Tiger Shrike
• Rufous Woodpecker
• Pin-striped Tit Babbler
• Banded Woodpecker
• Ornate Sunbird
• Blue-winged Pitta
• Malaysian Pied Fantail
• Greater Racket-tailed Drongo
• Pink-necked Green Pigeon
• Asian Glossy Starling
• Javan Myna
• Red Junglefowl
• Common Emerald Dove
• Oriental Magpie Robin
• Chestnut-winged Cuckoo
• Common Flameback
• Crimson Sunbird
• Asian Brown Flycatcher
• Mugimaki flycatcher
• Brown Shrike
• Crested Goshawk