The pineapple, a tropical fruit layered with socio-cultural symbolisms and histories, is a recurring motif within the artist’s practice. Fountain of Wealth reflects upon the cultivation of pineapples in Malaya and the mythologies of Singapore’s ‘pineapple kings’.

Once a cash crop grown widely in plantations spread across Malaya, it created not only generational wealth for individuals in the region, but also micro-cultures of folktowns, which once thrived on growing them. One of which, Pekan Nanas (translated into Pineapple Town), is located within the district of the artist’s hometown. A small waning kampung town in visual dilapidation, it was once one of the largest production bases for pineapples in the world. An unspecified portrait of Lee Kong Chian, one of the ‘pineapple kings’, and once the richest man in Southeast Asia, was subsequently discovered by the artist in the office of a secluded plantation nearby.

Interrogating cycles of wealth and its biopolitical symbolisms in the fruit, the fountain playfully ejects pineapple juice, which ferments and decays over time, attracting fruit flies, which also drown on the surface of the basin. The brown, yellow fluid at first glance resembles liquid gold, yet foams inside like a pool of urine, flowing down the tubes in a slow trickle.

Serendipitously, the showcase of this work often inspires the tossing of coins into the basin, which collects over the course of its presentation.