Strange Times

All children have been told at one time or another by their mothers not to do certain things, go to certain places, or associate with certain people. But every child will have disobeyed at least one of these warnings, and the consequences will have shaped the people they will eventually become.

Strange Times is a loose chronicle of a girl named Lila who is continually disobeying her mother’s warnings. Choosing to err on the side of imagination and exploration, Lila takes risks and lives with the consequences, which can run from the dark to the delightful.

The exhibit is a collaboration between The Curious Studio’s Wiji Lacsamana and award-winning horror writer Yvette Tan, with Tan writing a sentence, Lacsamana painting what she envisioned, and Tan creating a story from the resulting painting and rendering it in calligraphy.

There are strange times in every child’s life, times when reality blurs with imagination. Most children forget this when they enter adulthood. Some, like Lila, chose to live with its scars.

The Collaborators

Wiji Lacsamana of The Curious Studio is a self-taught graphic designer, watercolorist and tattoo artist whose influences include Edward Gorey, Carson Ellis, Yelena Bryksenkova and Jillian Tamaki. The ocean, moon, whales and forest are recurring themes in her work, which constantly explores and intertwines the possibilities between graphic design, contemporary illustration and tattoos.

Yvette Tan writes about anything from food to fashion to personalities to travel. Her horror fiction has won numerous awards, and nowadays, tends to explore the link between food and being frightened.