2:55AM
by: Carlomar Daona
When seemingly random digits defining a precise moment in time are highlighted, a question of significance automatically pops out from the curious mind: what this timestamp stands for and what it means amid the clock’s range of ticks and strikes. Occurring at a temporal threshold marking the transition from day to night, 2:55 AM may be one loaded with interesting significations. For instance, it falls within the time of the day that some regard as conducive to creativity, a moment defined by a surge of creative impulses and hence may ring a bell to nocturnal writers and artists. It is also a few minutes away from an hour that urban mythology popularly associates with spirits, fabled as the ominous “hour of the devil” and often linked with the paranormal.
Yeo Kaa takes cue from the colorful possibilities emerging from this liminal state and taps her own experience of this point in time. Thoughts and musings during the wee hours of the morning become the subject of the canvasses in this solo show. She ponders on worries and anxieties, pressures, restlessness, or plain random thoughts flowing out as she keeps awake when the rest of the world enjoys its slumber. She contemplates on the contrast between the joyful, carefree façade of personality that one usually projects outward, and the real, inner self battling with challenges and struggles. These eye-catching images and haunting reflections are born out of the mind and body’s uneasy state between activity and rest, consciousness and unconsciousness.
But the appeal of the compositions need not be anchored on the peculiar or unusual, for these thoughts and concerns may creep into any individual at any part of the day. These are all common images that confront the mind, imagined and configured by the artist into a realm of pastel colors and figuration reminiscent of animation. 2:55 AM may be a fleeting and insignificant moment before another day breaks, but it could also be the perfect time for introspection.
