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Fortune Rolls

Fundraising installation by Jennifer Chua

Backroom  | Opens on Apr 29 until May 15 | Wed, Thurs, Fri, Sat & Sun

Scan QR code.
Step into the backroom.
Pick your fortune. Read.
Build fortune towers.
Leave some words (or not).
Repeat (if you like).
Take your fortunes home.

"Chinesesy restaurants have fortune cookies, we have Fortune Rolls!"--- Fortune Rolls is a ticketed fun fundraising initiative for Articulate project space. Pop-up installation, concept by Jennifer Chua
Read if you wish,
Artist Utterance:

‘Fortune rolls’ is reminiscent of my childhood participation in my Singaporean Chinese family’s heaven and ancestor worship, where we would all sit round the living room to roll bags-full of incense paper into ingots to be burnt as offerings. Another ‘rolling’ thing that my grandmother would do, was to roll ten little squares in auspicious red paper containing the numbers from 0 to 1, which she would put in a small container, rattling it as she prayed piously until a single roll ‘jumps’ out. She would carefully unroll it to reveal the digit, re-roll, return it to the container, and then earnestly repeats the process until she gets 4 digits for her lottery pools ticket. Through the installation, I had hoped to create the opportunity where you are the rattling container and the determinant, in order for you ‘to chance’ upon your fortune reading. For the fortune readings and subsequent parts, I took inspiration from the Japanese omikuji tradition of the Shinto religion, where it also has a beautiful ritual ending where one could tie their fortune slips to a sacred tree as a blessing. Here, there are a hundred variations to the readings auto-generated from a Japanese site (https://www.ilmatar.net/~np/misc/omikuji.php) where on each fortune, there is a general trend in luck as well as various interesting sub-categories to your fortunes (nothing is all good or bad); instead of tying the slips, we ask you to leave behind the A4 sheets on the clips, with some words that will be perhaps be encouraging to the next person for good faith and karma; and more recently in the 3rd week of the project, there is a designated blessing space, added upon reaction from a Japanese participant who wished for it. ‘Fortune rolls’ is an interactive project designed for a fun fundraising, so I invite you to take a light-hearted, open-mind interpretation to your fortunes. Have fun! Rearrange the installation! Have more than one fortune! It is all good! Lastly, I am immensely thankful to the volunteers who helped roll these fortune rolls (close to 2000 of them); and as we sat in this space, round a Bunnings table, to roll, we had conversations and laughter… there was both a sweet nostalgia about people-past and elation of connections being made.

Jennifer Chua, May 10 2022, 9pm
For my grandmother, whom I only realised today had the coolest name ever, Madam Ng Thin Ker.

https://events.humanitix.com/fortune-rolls


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Opening reception | Sat Apr 30, 2-5pm

Opening reception for Margaret Roberts (with work supported by NAS), Sandy Edwards and a pop-up installation by articulate.



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