#bungaBERSIH

This started out as a yellow dress I made and wore during Bersih3.0, a momentous street protest calling for free and fair elections, held on 28 April 2012 in Kuala Lumpur.

The dress was covered in hundreds of hand-sewn flowers, which I meant to give away during the rally. Before this could happen, authorities fired teargas and violent chaos erupted on the streets. Images of me wearing the dress appeared in a few media outlets.

I revived the dress for Esquire Malaysia’s Media Art Project. In the Aug 2012 issue, I am photographed wearing it in a hall of mirrors, to reflect the media’s role in multiplying the message of Bersih.

The dress was also exhibited in ‘pop-up exhibitions’ at three venues. An information board invited visitors to ‘liberate’ a flower. Each flower was numbered. I asked people to email or tweet me if they took one, using the tag #bungaBERSIH.

This is an experiment in how an idea spreads and mutates through the media landscape and what that means for person-to-person interaction today. How can we take part in a beautiful idea, not just as a number in a social-political campaign, but also as ourselves?

UPDATE (29 Apr 2013): All the flowers were released into the wild (Bandar Utama intersection and Uptown roundabout) as part of Malaysian Spring.

UPDATE (20 Jul 2013): The flowers are still there, but getting black because of weather and pollution.

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Thanks to Shahril Nizam, Zed Adam, Fahmi Fadzil, Simon Soon, Mun Kao and Zedeck Siew for helping me sew flowers.