City of Stone

2026

Frottage Print, Digital Print, Video, Limetones

City of Stone is the work that I made during my three months residency in Cites des Arts, Paris. It is a continuation of the on-going project (Menggenggam Tempurung) that investigates the relation between power, mineral extraction and more than human world on how the city is built. 

When I came to Paris I was amazed that this city was built by limestone that was extracted underneath the city a long time ago. The limestone moves out from the underground to above as statues, buildings, monuments or houses and then becomes the city that is maybe so anthropocentric.  Then, I started to walk around the city and visited a former limestone quarry at Saint Maximin to interact with them by capturing through scrubbing the texture of the stone over the paper in some places – which is for me, it is not just a texture but also a scar of the stone itself and the memory of how we as humans interact with them.