The other faces of Frans is a photographic series that reimagines an 18th-century European statue – typically a symbol of cultural pride and permanence – through the lens of a migrant artist. Having lived in France for the past four years, Yadanar navigates the shifting forces between constructing a new home, and the opposite pull towards her homeland. In this work, a headless classical statue of Frans – an imagined name – is adorned with masks, garments, and objects that recall the spirit of Myanmar’s own traditions and Asia’s layered histories. These transformations dissolve fixed historical identities and introduce alternative, gender-fluid, and cross-cultural presences — figures with the quiet strength of guardians and the grace of ceremonial beings.

By merging Myanmar and broader Asian cultural forms with Western classical sculpture, the photographic series disrupts ideas of a static heritage and hierarchy. It becomes both a personal reflection of life in a foreign country and a meditation on identity as an evolving state — never entirely in one place, yet deeply rooted in many.

The Classification of Bodies unfolds through the written accounts of a German expatriate living in 1970’s Bugis Street, Singapore. Officially registered as a ship chandler, he relates his experience operating discreetly as a pimp, navigating the city’s underbelly with the calculated eye of a former art student trained in human anatomy. Obsessed with categorisation, he applies the archaic sciences of physiognomy and forensic photography to the people he encounters. Across a backdrop of open drains, cabaret neon, and transient bodies, he meets a Dutch sailor in search of a performer. In opposition to the writer’s approach to classification, the sailor’s vague and hazy memories of his muse – equal parts desire and obsession – unravel simplistic definitions of gender and identity.

The work’s form echoes the notice boards of institutions, where rules and regulations are typically displayed. Yet here, the asymmetrical glass panels and misaligned grooves introduce a subtle incongruity and a structural refusal to the order of things. This formal disruption mirrors the work’s critique of rigid systems of classification, unsettling the authority of bureaucratic displays and their promises of neutrality.

Detail 2

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