10 Questions with Phyllis Wong

THE ORIGINAL ISSUE10 Art Magazine | Featured Artist

Born and bred in Singapore, Phyllis Wong has lived and worked in Singapore, Los Angeles, London and currently resides in Rotterdam, The Netherlands. She is a trained architect and graduated from the avant-garde and renowned Southern California Institute of Architecture (SCI-Arc). After practicing architecture in Los Angeles and London, she moved to Rotterdam and subsequently became an entrepreneur and a mother. During this move, she observed the Dutch's lack of food culture and appreciation. Hence she set up a catering company. Phyllis began preaching the importance of supporting local growers and sustainable eating while continuing her creativity by honing her skills in stunning food presentations. In 2019, she embarked on her journey as a multi-disciplinary artist. Currently, she leads a unique artistic career combining her experiences and knowledge from the architecture realm and the food industry.

www.phylwong.com | @phylwong

ARTIST STATEMENT

Phyllis Wong is an artist and an architect with an eloquent eye for tiny details and a flair for spatial quality. She focuses on food-related and sustainability-driven subjects. Steered by the urge to manifest daily facts into a visual pleasure, Phyllis aims to translate data and information into contemporary and witty creations. Her series of work always combines and connects food-related themes with an appropriate spatial characteristic or a matching location. Within every framework lies her strong and vibrant composition skills, combined with an adequate sense of aesthetic balance and harmony. This form of art direction and distinctive approach aims to glorify her ideas to achieve a unique 'Gesamtkunstwerk', a total work of art. The medium of her work ranges from colleges, photography, objects, and events.

The Factory | PROJECT DESCRIPTION

The Factory is an ongoing series that serves to critique the effects of industrial dairy farming through a collection of narrated still life.
Dairy milk, evidently nutritious and essential for our diet, is clearly also a commodity that brought about many setbacks to us consumers and our environment. Gone are the days when consumers prefer renowned dairy milk due to animal cruelty. We are now faced not just with this concern but also the bigger impact and destruction it is causing to our unique habitat and climate.

The compositions of The Factory series showcase information and data related to the production of dairy milk in the years 2019 and 2020. It investigates the dairy milk industry by translating various specifications and statistics, illustrated by coloured rings. The information includes how much is produced, processed, consumed, and wasted. The series was shot at the UNESCO heritage site - The Van Nelle Factory in Rotterdam, the Netherlands, chosen for its modernistic spatial interiors and, most importantly, for its visual connection to a mass-production venue.

​Art direction & concept: Phyllis Wong
Photography: Pim Top

INTERVIEW

You come from architecture, but once you moved to The Netherlands, you got involved with the food industry and now work as an artist. Tell us more about your background and how you got involved with such different fields. 

I last practiced as an architect when I lived in London. The last three years were a very intense period when I, with a team of 10 others, worked on a 500,000 sqft office BREEAM awarded (sustainability assessment method) office building located along the Thames River. Towards completing this project, I became pregnant with my first child. Then a new job for my husband prompted us to move to Rotterdam, The Netherlands. The timing was right for the move. The Lehman crisis had just happened, and the UK's economy came to a standstill. Rotterdam's situation then wasn't cheerful either, but it seems to be a better place to raise a family compared to expansive London. So for myself, it appears to be a good time to take some time off from work and focus on my pregnancy and adjusting to our new home.

Immediate after I moved to Rotterdam, that was 2009, I found myself very surprised with the food culture of this harbour city. Eating out was expansive, and the quality was not promising. There were no weekly farmers' markets and no notion of sustainable eating or supporting local farmers, where such practices were very common in neighbouring countries like Germany or the UK. My new home was very supermarket dependent, and I found it shocking that people would literary buy everything from the supermarkets, including bread and readymade meals. Hence this provokes me to make some major changes to our own lifestyle. Partly due to my role as a new mother, I started cooking more. I began to reach out for liked minded entrepreneurs who ran their little food companies that were more sustainable. And that was when my catering business began.

You are originally from Singapore; you studied in the US, worked in London, and currently live in the Netherlands. How did these different places influence your work? Do you feel inspired or influenced by either country equally?

Obviously, the cultures between these places are distinctively different. Hence, I like to think of myself always as an explorer and very tolerant, knowing how people would behave or think. The key is to be open-minded, curious, and yes, be inspired. I take in what interests or excites me the most and apply it (sometimes unconsciously) to my lifestyle and work. 

Your project "The Factory" is a visual investigation of the impact of industrial dairy farming. How did you get involved in this theme, and how did you develop the project? 

My awareness of sustainability started when I lived in London. It mainly came about through my work as an architect regarding what kind of operations and materials we used, its longevity, and how it relates to the climate and environment. However, it was only when I lived in Rotterdam that I applied a sustainable lifestyle on a daily basis. I began to learn about how unviable industrial cattle farming is. As cattle farming is very common in the Netherlands, I also felt slightly let down by my choice of the new home. This sort of industrial take on farming is just too destructive for our wellbeing and the environment. The issue is prominent, but this type of news does not advertise or confront itself enough in our faces. It is complicated, involves too many changes, and is a big cash-driven commodity that easily disrupts the whole system. I want to do my part to raise awareness about this too; hence the idea of reflecting the industrial milk industry emerged. I basically did my own research and readings. I visited several dairy farms and observed what was happening there. Then at a local biodynamic family-run dairy farm outside Delft, I casually spoke to the owners about my views. They openly explained their choice of converting to biodynamic operation and what that meant for them, personally and economically. In the beginning, it was a 'needle in the hay' situation to find support. It took a long time to reach the entirety of their goal, but as they feel so responsible for their own children, family, and customers, it was a worthy move. That was when I realised there were already pioneers of smaller establishments willing to make huge significant changes. And I wanted to be part of them too.

The project focuses on the impact that dairy production has on the environment, displaying accurate data and information. What is the aim of the project? And how did you choose which data to integrate into your project? 

The main aim is to table food-related issues that concern the majority of us in the developed world like Europe. Statistics and data are hard facts, stiff numbers and charts, and at times too rigid. Hence I see my role as the mediator who bridges facts via my interpretation, and that is my unique selling point. I chose the data most relevant to us, the consumers. It can give us perspective and encourage us to be less ignorant and make impactful changes.

Oftentimes, when talking about the environment, we feel powerless confronted with massive climate changes and cataclysms. Do you think we can all do our part in reversing this situation, or do we need politics and big companies to act first?

Start small by acting out our beliefs. Luckily, visual representation is so powerful in this social media-dominant era we are in now. There are so many images that are being passed on from one to another every single moment. This can assist visual artists in spreading their work and, in my case, the awareness tuck within. I truly think and continue to hope that this pattern can alter the decision of the 'higher power' or economy. Things can change for the better eventually, even when they may seem far-fetched in the beginning.

In your production, what other themes do you pursue? And what are your preferred ones?

I like to play with natural light and manipulate contrast and saturation to make an image stand out on its own. I strive to make every image as unique as possible. I may have a vision already ingrained in my mind before shooting, but I am not an expert when it comes to the technicality of photography. Hence if I'm puzzled or unsure, I prefer to throw questions at my photographer, and we try to challenge each other until we are satisfied with the results. This is a fun part of the job where usually the outcome is the most pleasing.

Let's talk about the future. Do you think art and architecture can have a long-lasting impact when it comes to raising awareness on such themes? Will we be able to fully inform and educate the public through our work? 

Yes, I do, and I strongly believe the impact is long-lasting and effective. Being a parent, I realised I listen and act to my children's awareness a lot. They learn this information from school, and their environment now is more vulnerable than during our youth. I feel very responsible for how their future is going to unfold. Art and architecture can touch us deeper than we expect because it is so relevant in their own unique ways. It is more embedded into our culture than before, and I truly think it has the power to influence and change. However, I don't think our work can fully educate the public. Effective artwork can only touch us to a certain point, after which we have to pick up at our individual position and standpoint and respond to the awareness in our own independent way. The diversity of solutions and ways forward is inspiring and surely encouraging. 

The last couple of years had a massive impact on our ways of experiencing the World. We discovered we are just a replaceable part of this system, and Nature would find its way back once we will disappear. How did the pandemic influence your work and research? 

The pandemic has made me want to simplify. Simplify life, simplify work, slow down, look into the source and dismantle elements to the finest details and find simple joy in it.

What are you working on now? Do you have any new projects in development?

The Factory is an ongoing series. I am currently working on the consequences and effects of the growing alternative milk industry, which is not necessarily a solution to curb the impart of industrial dairy milk farming. After this, I will be working on a series about the sugar industry, another very controversial and insightful topic.

And finally, what are your goals for 2022?

Honestly, I don't have goals for every new year. Life can bring so many unexpected turns. I am writing this while storm Eunice is causing so much havoc in the Netherlands. Trees and roofs are being ripped off from the ground while schools are closed, and we are told to stay at home. This is climate change happening in front of our eyes just when we think the pandemic is coming to an end. It genuinely feels very distressing and scary. I do question if being 'aware' is enough or already too late? While we can only hope for the best. Let's be vigilant and keep evolving our minds and work. This would be the most ideal way to create the most relevant and greatest masterpieces each and every new year.