Mapping Ancestry

Mapping Ancestry

Jade Johnson (UK)

Drop-in Workshop

Time & Date: Sun, 31 Aug, 7.30 PM - 10.30 PM

Venue : 42 Waterloo Street, Inner Courtyard

"To be indigenous doesn’t mean to be from a land. It means to be of a land.“

This workshop invites you to question, who creates the borders and if it were you, where would you draw yours? We will use mapping as a tool not only for navigation but as a way to redefining place, to remember but also to dream.

You will be encouraged to enter the creative activities offered with a family member, a friend or even a stranger. Artist Jade Johnson (UK) invites participants to remember a river but not through its current shape, but through how it exists in your memory, how it is immortalised through stories. You can also try out a partner exercise, where one person describes a place from memory and another maps it through description alone- creating pathways with the imagined and the remembered. Together we will ask: how do we map the intangible, and what new lands emerge when we do?

About the Artist

Jade Johnson (UK)

Born, raised and educated in the UK, Jade Johnson is an illustrator and animator of indigenous Taiwanese heritage. Jade has worked closely as a visual artist for several community organisations, centering community engagement workshops at the core of her research. Jade strongly believes in designing “for” and “with” a community rather than “at” one. Jade is interested in promoting the rediscovery of forgotten indigenous handicrafts through art, as well as using her practice as a method for healing. By inviting young indigenous peoples to learn these skills from their elders, Jade believes this will help promote ethnic identity of young people; alleviate loneliness of the elderly, and strengthen the bonds between generations. Jade’s aim is to apply art to social causes and projects she cares about, through a range of art-forms.

About The Listening Biennial

Since 2021, The Listening Biennial has sought to foster research and discussion on listening, recognising its transformative power as key to enriching personal lives and social initiatives, and which supports ethical and political practices. As part of the Singapore Night Festival, the artists of The Listening Biennial invite you to enter the space of Third Listening, to listen out for a plurality of life-forms as well as pathways of interconnection between seemingly irreconcilable differences.

Read more: https://listeningbiennial.net/biennial-editions/third-edition

Singapore Edition: https://www.brack.sg/index.php/2025/07/12/the-listening-biennial-third-edition/