Cynthia Delaney Suwito, the 23-year-old Singapore-based graduate of LASALLE College of the Arts, became famous after her work called “Knitting Noodles” was displayed at 2016 Untapped Discovery, an exhibition of emerging artists.
Each day Suwito spends three or four hours adding 20-30 cm of noodle threads to the long delicate scarf she has been knitting since late 2014.
The project entails a looped video that shows Suwito knitting instant noodles with normal knitting needles.
“I was doing it because I wanted to contrast the idea of time. How I’m doing something very slow to something ‘instant’ like instant noodles. The purpose of it is actually to make people slow down and take a break from this ‘instant’ world,” the artist told Channel News Asia.
Noodles actually make the slow process of knitting even slower than it should be. It took Suwito a few months to learn the tricky process of noodle knitting to perfection. “It’s only recently that I’ve been able to make something this long,” she said.
Suwito wrote on her Facebook that she does not expect people to immediately understand her concept.
“A lot of people say I’m obsessed with instant noodles. But I think the world is obsessed with them,” the artist wrote on her website.
Suwito users other objects in her artworks, such as plastic bottles and clocks, but instant noodles is definitely her favorite material, which she used for two previous objects as well.
“What I usually think of when I’m making my work is I’m trying to take something that is simple and everyday, something we see as we live our lives, and give a deeper meaning to it,” Suwito explains.
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