Year of Birth:
1965

Disability:
Hemiplegia

Occupation:
General Clerk

Leaning her weight on a pair of crutches, Sereen’s tilting walk make the heads in the MRT train turn in her direction. Her Tai Qi lessons pale for a moment in their impact as a form of physiotherapy. These rude, questioning stares have haunted a good part of her life. She has to try to consign them to oblivion. At work or on the streets, crowds seem to elbow her in, if not into a mountain of paperwork, it is into a sea of self-consciousness. In this state of limbo, Sereen’s first instinct is to bury herself and her loneliness in Art.

By the yardstick of her Post-war baby boom generation, procuring a white-collar job is already a measure of success for a person with disability. As a general clerk in a multinational firm, she has a better standing than numerous others who have to work in a sheltered employment workshop. Such is the reality for a person with special needs in meritocratic Singapore. Sereen knows she has little cause to whine. Yet one could not but notice the disparity between her world and the one belonging to the able-bodied.

The patronising stares of pity seem to hammer home society’s ignorance and prejudice. In the universe of Art where beauty is the goal, Sereen feels most at ease. In its embrace, her negative thoughts and feelings somehow undergo a transformation and she, the artist, always soars above a vile situation. Painting, she concludes, is a therapeutic gauntlet for her pensive moods and divine inspirations. The act of painting natural landscapes grants her an inner peace and calm she so hungers for.