Dioramas for Tanjong Rimau is a work that is interested in spirit histories, the disturbance that urban redevelopment brings, and how we might extend a gesture of healing towards our more-than-human counterparts.A string of smaller islands surrounds the southern coast of mainland Singapore. These islands include the renamed—and rebranded—Pulau Blakang Mati, or Sentosa. Today, Sentosa is known as an urban tourist destination, but it is also where one can find Tanjong Rimau, a protected coastal landscape where ecosystems made up of intertidal creatures can thrive. In the work Dioramas for Tanjong Rimau, Zarina Muhammad, Joel Tan and Zachary Chan refer to this site and the southern waterfront of Singapore, which has been earmarked for further redevelopment. The work features vessels that bubble and murmur out incantations, drawing audiences into the installation’s soundscape. Looking towards the land and its layered history, the work draws on ancient cosmologies and spirit paths as a means of remembering. Here, “cosmologies” is used to refer to a community's shared understanding around the formation and organisation of the world, which often binds human and more-than-human realms together. Forgotten for generations, the past lives of the land are hiding in plain sight even as these places are redeveloped beyond recognition, nestled amongst the luxury apartments and skyscrapers that typify today’s urban environment.
