Curatorial Statement

Snakes and Ladders is an exhibition dedicated to life and its dance between fate and chaos. Here, there are no advantages or guarantees: it is chance, encounter, karma, and arbitrary choice that lead each person through life. Inviting its viewers and artists to question and navigate the realities that arise through opportunities and pitfalls.

This exhibition seeks to explore each artist’s experiences in life and how their artworks help frame their setbacks, advances, and realisations in between them. Whether through space, physical and metaphysical, or through storytelling, emotional and spiritual, artists re-contextualize what it means to live their lives through every twist and turn. 

You may ask yourself, where do I stand in life? And how has this come about?

One hundred boxes and a pair of dice, the game lures the player to never trust the game itself, but rather the fate that will carry them up the ranks or the misfortune that drops them from their places.

Snakes present as moments of failure and setbacks, yet beckon the player to reflect on their position. Snakes twist fate, putting the player in a vulnerable position.

Ladders present moments of opportunity and positive progression, bringing the player to a higher, more favourable place. Ladders, too, twist fate, putting the player in a vulnerable position.

Snakes and Ladders is a game many attribute to their childhood. Roll a dice and move your place accordingly. Dissecting this simple premise and game reveals a much deeper idea, an allegory of life and its vulnerable nature wrapped in fun colours and symbolized as snakes and ladders.

Eight players, two dice, one game, your turn is now…