It is a pleasure to have The Sewer Soaperie included in this beautifully installed exhibition. My deepest thanks to curators Kuang Yi Ku and Davey Lin. Friends in Taiwan, please check it out!

The Sewer Soaperie (2016- ) is an artscience project that turns fatbergs into soap.

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Exhibition Name: Contaminations: Towards a Science Gallery
Period: 2026.06.01 MON. – 07.09 THU.
Venue: NYCU Gallery, Hsinchu, Taiwan
Curator: Ku Kuang Yi with Lin Cheng Wei (Davey)

Curatorial Statement

Looking back at the history of science, the discovery of the antibiotic penicillin was, in fact, the result of an experimental contamination.

When we speak of contamination, we may think of plastic micro-particles, viruses, or space debris. At the same time, contamination also signifies a disturbance of boundaries, or the infiltration, staining, and hybridization between two entities. Such interactions may appear negative, yet they also represent opportunities for transformation. Art & Science Collaboration functions in a similar way: seemingly disruptive to each other’s methodologies, yet capable of merging into entirely new possibilities.

This exhibition unfolds across two main sections. On the first floor, the area titled “Towards a Science Gallery” presents the team’s research on global institutions of Art & Science Collaboration through richly illustrated panels. It highlights twelve exemplary cases drawn from universities, research institutes, and cultural organizations, offering comparative analyses of their models. An interactive game further invites visitors to step into the role of a resource-holder, experimenting with diverse choices to construct their own vision of an ideal science gallery.

Extending to the second floor, the thematic section “Contamination” takes pollution as its central keyword. It features works by seven international artists who have previously participated in global Science Gallery exhibitions, alongside six student groups from NYCU’s interdisciplinary courses, and one collaborative team formed by fiber artist Lin Tzu Fen and the Microplastic Risk Communication Group at NYCU’s Institute of Science, Technology and Society. Together, they transform pressing issues—such as global water pollution, microplastic contamination, and air pollution, as well as infectious diseases like mosquito-borne illnesses and HIV—into diverse artistic creations.

In Taiwan today, collaborations between art and science remain relatively rare. Do we truly need such an exhibition model? If so, what strategies should we adopt to build sustainable systems and foster international exchange? This exhibition invites audiences to reflect, to question, and to spark new dialogues together.

I am honoured and excited to have spoken at the Indigenous Studies Discussion Group Symposium at the University of Cambridge next week. I presented my talk, ‘Atmospheric Storytelling: Scent, Petrichor, and Ecocultural Knowledge’, specifically the Olfactory Wheel for the Critical Zone and Martian Petrichor projects. Thank you for having me!

Today I had the pleasure of speaking again at my dear friend Zoe Bezpalko’s DMBA class at the California College of the Arts, sharing my talk, ‘The Creative Resistance: Art, Science, and Systems Change’. Zoe was one of my first Climate Change Couture models, and we met when we were both based in Singapore more than a decade ago. Thank you for having me!

Returning this time felt especially meaningful and also bittersweet knowing this is the last time. After 119 years, the venerable CCA is closing — an institution that shaped generations of artists, designers, architects, and thinkers. It’s difficult to imagine the cultural landscape without it.

To my students here in Sydney: let’s be grateful for our art and design education — the studios, workshops, critiques, conversations, libraries, friendships, and experiments. Nothing is guaranteed in this life, including the institutions we think will always be there. The opportunity to learn, make, imagine, and think critically together is deeply precious. Protect it, honour it, and make good use of it.

Excited to once again be part of the Virtual Events Committee as one of this year’s Obama Leadership Network Champions 🌍 It’s already been a joy connecting with fellow committee members Amanda, Alina, and Ivanna late at night here in Sydney. We’ve had the chance to meet, exchange ideas, and build momentum together. There’s a real sense of energy and care in the group, and we’re all excited about what we’re planning for the year ahead.

Being part of this also brings me back to 2019, when I first joined the network and we convened in Malaysia, just before the pandemic. There was so much hope, curiosity, and openness without knowing the scale of challenges that lay ahead. Returning to this community now, I’m reminded how vital these connections are and how we need them more than ever.

There’s also so much excitement around the upcoming opening of the Obama Presidential Center—an inspiring milestone that reflects the power of community, storytelling, and civic engagement. I’m also eager to contribute to and learn from the Communities of Practice in Education, Democracy, Climate, and Social Entrepreneurship & Tech. Each of these spaces feels deeply aligned with the kind of work and conversations our world needs right now.

It’s going to be a meaningful year ahead!

The Sewer Soaperie is featured in The Hindustan Times.

Thank you to Rachel Lopez for including the project in her piece on fatbergs—those stubborn accumulations of oil, wipes, and everyday habits that quietly shape our urban infrastructures.

The Sewer Soaperie began as a speculative question 10 years ago — what might it mean to transform sewer waste into soap? — and has since evolved into an ongoing inquiry into waste, systems, and the sensory dimensions of what we choose not to see (or smell).

I’m grateful (and slightly amused) to see the work travel into this context a decade after its inception as someone with clogged shower drains. The project continues across exhibitions, research collaborations, and interdisciplinary work between the poetic and the infrastructural.

The CreMAP Directory of Innovators and Art-Scientists is a Montreal-based platform dedicated to creating a network of multidisciplinary minds in art, science and technology. The directory is a global hub for the integration of creativity and research, inspiring solutions at the intersection of art and science. I’m stoked to have a profile — head on over and look up other interdisciplinary peers worldwide!

I had a wonderful time speaking at the Centre for Contemporary Art Toi Moroki in beautiful Ōtautahi Christchurch. My talk was entitled, ‘Sensing the Planet: Art, Material Ecologies, and Reimagining Human–Nature Relations’ where I shared my environmental practice and recent work developed this year in the Philippines, as well as Deep Sea Mining Claw Machine. It was a pleasure engaging with such a vibrant and thoughtful local arts community. I hope to return and continue the conversation soon. Thank you for having me!

I am excited to premiere ‘Deep Sea Mining Claw Machine’, an interactive artwork that turns the familiar arcade claw game into a reflection on one of today’s most debated industries: deep sea mining.

Instead of plush toys, this machine is filled with soft, squishy objects shaped like polymetallic nodules — real mineral deposits found on the ocean floor that contain metals used in batteries, electric vehicles, and clean energy systems. These playful stand-ins invite visitors to think about how “green” technologies can still depend on extractive practices that harm the environment. The machine plays a custom audio track of a mining expedition.

The claw machine itself has an industrial past. Early versions, created in the 1890s, were inspired by excavation equipment from massive projects like the Panama Canal — icons of ambition and control over nature. That history echoes in today’s global struggles over ocean resources and questions of who has the right to mine them.

Claw machines are also games of chance, sitting somewhere between skill and luck. This gray area mirrors the uncertain ethics of deep sea mining — a field caught between economic opportunity, environmental risk, and global inequality.

Through touch, play, and chance, the Deep Sea Mining Claw Machine invites visitors to consider: who really wins when we extract from the planet’s depths?

‘Deep Sea Mining Claw Machine’ is part of an international group exhibition, uncommissioned, a site-responsive exhibition that engages with the city as both canvas and contested space. Its first edition, ‘Playground of the Invisible’, invites artists to slip playful, overlooked, or quietly defiant gestures into the cracks of everyday life.

You can play to win a squishy nodule thanks to our sponsor, Lucky Dip, an arcade in Adelaide, South Australia!

More about the project here.