Photos courtesy of Critical Craft Collective

WHILE HOME REPRESENTS safety and comfort, it also acts as an intimate space shaped by unseen systems of discipline and boundaries. In it, each person is assigned unseen roles within a larger social order. Can home be liberating, or is it about learning the contours of one’s place?

Singapore-based artist and educator Adeline Kueh mulls on the idea surrounding this sense and structure of home, as shaped by inherited roles embedded within our psyche.

“Home is not just physical, but also psychical,” suggests Adeline, who, alongside fellow artist and co-curator Hazel Lim, co-founded the Critical Craft Collective (CCC), a curatorial platform that uses craft to explore dynamics of power, care and kinship.

Their latest exhibition, From Palais to Pulau, challenges conventional notions of domesticity and belonging. Its first edition was recently shown during the 2025 Singapore Art Week, and is being restaged in Penang this June. An ode to dislocation and deep care, the exhibition acts as a gathering that reflects different ways of belonging through everyday materials, found objects and slow conversations that often begin around a kitchen table.

“[The exhibition includes] all items of care. And when [we] give attention to these things, there are values that are imbued in [them] below the surface,” says Adeline. “These elements of beauty can be ways of imagining the future, of hope, of resilience.”

The duo’s collective began under lockdown. “Covid-19 really got us to rethink all these things because the demarcations between home and work were erased,” says Adeline in a recent interview.

Their starting point was the Victorian-era tome published in 1861, Mrs. Beeton’s Book of Household Management by Isabella Beeton. “The main idea was on how to relook some of these ideals, break them down, unpack them and think about what they mean in the 21st century for us here and now,” says Adeline.

Acting as an etiquette manual and domestic scripture, the text became CCC’s critical mirror. “It’s Victorian, but still it’s so relevant to us,” says Hazel. “We thought, how could we do a little spin… and a riff on this through the exhibition?”

That riff manifests in their collective’s series of works and gatherings that unpack how home, care and craft are shaped by history and colonial inheritances alongside expectations of gender roles.

Kinship As A Verb

Adeline and Hazel’s approach to curating draws from a feminist and queer lineage of care, inspired by theorists like feminist scholar Donna Haraway, media theorist Wendy Chun, Gavin Van Horn and botanist Robin Wall Kimmerer—where care and kinship are verbs and embodied in actions rather than static ideals. As a verb,“kinning” involves reciprocity and deep listening.

“They are action-based, not just nouns,” says Adeline. “[Scholars] talked about the idea of ‘kinning’ because—particularly in indigenous cultures—nature or plants are also teachers, as opposed to humans being on top of everything. And that’s the kind of approach to understanding we are at. Perhaps if we are to consider these kinds of positionings, we wouldn’t be as extractive or as disruptive towards things,” she says.

“But this ‘kinning’—this idea of kinship as a verb—is quite nice because it talks about how we have to be clear about our intentions… we have to be grateful…And then the deep listening is really very embodied because you listen with not your ears, but with your hands, your feet and your body. And there’s a certain level of receptivity and reciprocity.”

The duo’s work therefore serves as a reclamation and a reimagining of what it means to create art.

This translates into everything from mentorship of emerging artists to their “radical domesticity” of hosting community-based exhibitions in transient, often overlooked spaces. Years of teaching and community-building have allowed them to navigate bureaucratic processes to mentor younger artists to do the same.

“For us, being on the ground is the idea for a grassroots movement,” says Hazel. “Working with people and making do… I think that is kind of the ethos that we tend to follow.”

“We as citizens have agency to also affect change from within,” adds Adeline, adding that providing access as a means to “pay it forward” is central to their work.

Craft then becomes part of a heritage and methodology. It is a way of thinking, talking and being. “It’s really about care and kinship being the primary emphasis for what the craft collective is about,” says Adeline, who is also a senior lecturer at the LASALLE College of the Arts in Singapore.

Art At The Exhibition

As much about unlearning as it is about making, From Palais to Pulau asks what it means to gather, to make space and to rethread home, especially in postcolonial contexts that continue to carry the weight of imported ideals. In this way, the exhibition examines “island” as a concept within struggles that toggle between connection, isolation and movement.

The exhibition brings together artists from Singapore and the wider Southeast Asian region, working with materials that range from textiles and discovered objects to video and digital installations.

It combines both physical and digital elements to explore themes of labour, domesticity and the shifting idea of home. The artworks invite viewers to engage with personal and collective narratives of care, migration and belonging.

Adeline’s mixed-media pieces include everyday items to trigger conversations about our relationship with rituals and each other. Her installation, “Bawang membawang”—using layers of linen and haberdashery that resemble onions, a basic staple in Southeast Asian cooking—examines the interlinkages between gossip, stories and labour through the act of peeling onions, suggesting that gossip can act as both a point of gathering, but also solidarity.

In “Pharmacopeias for Accredited Agents of Poisoning”, Singaporean artist Zarina Muhammad uses a mix of crushed incense powder, soil, spices and mirrors to examine John Gimlette’s 1915 text, Malay Poisons and Charm Cures, which touches on notions of gender and race through folklore, magic and geography.

In a digital installation titled, “kenti, kenti, sabrozu!”, which is Kristang for “hot, hot, delicious!”, Malaysian artist Andrea Danker explores the emotional dimensions of cooking and generational stories through a video focused on traditional recipes.

Adeline says that they are constantly figuring ways to work with various artists in Penang and across different communities surrounding the idea of home. “How do we create the notion of the home within ourselves so that we can feel more at ease and feel more like we belong? The notion of belonging is key to me.”

“I’m looking forward to ‘kinning’ more with Penang, and really [having] deeper conversations with people there,” adds Hazel, whose own contribution, “Perpendicular Asymptotes”, is a series of overlapping patterns through threads on paper that explores invisible labour, narrative and the construction of history through logic and creativity.

“We could probably find something quite similar,” says Hazel, on bringing their exhibition to Penang, “to really facilitate a lot of good conversations.”

Reimagining Home In Penang

The exhibition’s shift from Singapore to Penang mirrors the concept of home as a never-changing communal experience. Both cities with histories as port settlements are places of constant exchange.

At Hin Bus Depot, the exhibition finds a new home in an open-air setting that has already made the artists feel welcomed.

“We already feel so at home,” says Hazel, noting how the space itself has shaped their approach, including the inclusion of a film screening.

In Penang, Adeline is attuned to the shared histories of migration and exchange, where people transform unfamiliar places into home. “Our [prior] trips to Penang… also gave us a very strong impression about what we can do together, what kinds of magic we can try and create… Every project is a learning experience.”

For Hin Bus Depot curator Ivan Gabriel, the exhibition’s theme is deeply personal. Having moved frequently within Penang as a child, he sees parallels with experiences of migrant workers in the island—many of whom, despite being far from home, have made Penang their own.

“Oftentimes as someone who takes care of the space... you always think about people coming in, you want them to feel welcomed. But sometimes we forget about ourselves.”

At the exhibition’s first edition in Singapore, Ivan was moved by artist Divaagar’s work, “Fine Malaya”, which depicted an old wooden cabinet showcasing banana leaf-themed utensils in various forms and materials. For Ivan, the artwork questioned colonial depictions of everyday Southeast Asian utensils and eating culture, and how these influence our self-perception and cultural identity.

“From a visitor’s standpoint, I feel like I’m walking into someone’s home and they are telling me the story of their upbringing and the struggles that they face,” says Ivan. “A lot of it I can find resonance with, and a lot of it the artists are questioning. I realised that there was so much interlink, and I had not even met the artist in person.”

Adeline hopes that the exhibition will generate more conversations like this on connection and community. “Conversations that start intimately can also have wider positive ripples that [tell us] we need not do things alone.”

For her, it is like “seeding an idea”. “We are very clear that [the exhibition artworks] can be a process-based experimentation,” Adeline says, offering insight into the artist's thought processes. “Ultimately, we’re playing house,” she says with a smile.

“We hope that they will come and understand that homemaking is something that we bring, that we carry within ourselves,” she says.

From Palais to Pulau (Penang Edition) runs from 6 June to 7 July 2025 at Hin Bus Depot. The exhibition will be accompanied by a series of conversations, talks and guided tours.

Visit https://www.criticalcraftcollective.com.sg/ for more information about the Critical Craft Collective (CCC).