How Far We’ve Come - Studio Showcase

Text for my first illustration showcase since my student days - happening 3rd to 16th May 2022.

Two years after graduating college and navigating a new normal imposed by the Covid-19 pandemic, How far we’ve come is illustrator Cassandra Sim’s self-introduction as an artist and storyteller through an informal showcase at her studio. In the absence of commissions or illustration jobs in 2021, she revisited personal interests for inspiration to sustain her drawing practice and develop a new portfolio. Unfettered by the professional parameters that accompany given assignments, she indulged in free drawing and “structural experimentations” – a series of imaginative concepts fueled by a long-time fascination with architecture and the human psychology in response to spatial design, with an infusion of fantasy and science fiction elements to play on all sorts of delightful impossibilities.

Though highly introspective and, at the time, made only with the goal of refining her technical and visual communication skills, without a particular audience in mind, the drawings on display can speak to viewers in the recognizable moments of pain, tenacity, courage, curiosity and wonder replete in elaborate scenes of human accomplishments: whether it is climbing to the top of a daunting structure, magically painting the sky or traversing the wide ocean by means of a skeletal bridge. Ascension runs a theme, not just in this showcase, but in many of Cassie’s works and even her life as a point of fixation – the idea of climbing up or rising in the physical, literal and metaphorical sense, in order to get to a higher vantage point; the journey as well as the goal.