This series of woodcut is an attempt to capture the characteristics and complexities of urban city life in 21st Century Singapore. Similar to many urban cities, despite the close proximity of people living and working spatially together, there is little interaction among strangers. Few faces meet, people tend to avoid eye contact and hardly any open smiles.

Describing this paradox of cities, the German sociologist Georg Simmel noted, “one nowhere feels as lonely and lost as in the metropolitan crowd.” Through observations from daily life, I endeavour to portray faces and gestures of individuals in the crowd, creating narratives, or the lack of it, that entail the traits of modernisation especially in this age of technology.