Shadowy Flower Fragrant Beauty
Poster design for the public workshop and conversation between Ming Poon,
a choreographer, and the internationally acclaimed, Singapore-based Nan Dan
teacher and performer Aw Yeong Peng Mun.
Drag has long been used by artists as a strategy to challenge the binary concept of gender
and subvert the heteronormative social ordering of sexual identities. In this research,
Ming wants to expand the notion of drag and explore its potential as an instrument of decolonisation,
to challenge and de-centre the hegemonic west-centric narrative and definition of queerness.
Instead of taking reference from the mainstream Euro-American drag culture, which is rooted
in western aesthetics and values, Ming turns to his Chinese roots and takes inspiration
from the male-to-female impersonation in traditional Chinese opera: Nan Dan (男旦).
