Abel Tan

For this project, I took inspiration from memories during my time in the Singapore Army. A big chunk of my Recon training required us to spend days navigating inside dense jungle terrain, and before we would head out for training exercises or missions, we’d prepare our maps. We were issued topographic maps because it allows us to understand the shape and character of the Earth’s surface based on the shape of the lines and their spacing. Due to the nature of my job scope, we did our missions and exercises at night to ensure that we took advantage of the cover of darkness and moved while the enemy is least likely to be mobilizing. Moving at night comes at the cost of sleep deprivation; there was very little sleep during the day because we had to keep alert to stay hidden. Sleep deprivation makes something as simple as moving up and down a mountain an arduous task, so to keep me awake, I had to play games with my mind. The hills or mountains were no longer a bunch of stacked up lines but instead a combination of triangles, so in my head, I kept telling myself, “one more triangle.” If I could make it to the next triangle, eventually, I’d reach the objective, and that I did. To bring this memory into life, I decided to draw triangles of different shapes and sizes onto a large 19 24″ sheet of bristol paper and form it into a shape of a mountain by gently scoring the triangles. The individual triangles represented the mountain’s interior, while the combination of all the triangles showcased the exterior component of the mountain.