BOUNDED SPACE is pleased to announce the solo exhibition of artist duo Chow and Lin, Even If It Looks Like Grass, opening on September 4. Curated by Evelyn Sun, the exhibition presents the artists' research and reconsideration of social systems and human perception of existence, using wheat and data as points of entry.  

Foreword

The cultivation of wild wheat began across the Fertile Crescent in the Middle East over ten thousand years ago, moving across the Mesopotamian into ancient Egypt and later to wider geographic regions. Today, wheat is intertwined with human development and culture, with its original or processed forms present on all continents.

The story of data can be traced to inventions including Gutenberg's mechanized printing press in the 15th century, Hollerith's tabulating machine in 1884 and the Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer developed in the 1940s. Access to data was revolutionized with the Internet, and digitization of text, still images, video and audio has accelerated in the past two decades. The binary sequence of 0s and 1s has become a prevailing global language to store, disseminate and analyse information. Wheat and data have journeyed across different temporal and spatial contexts to become critical pillars of human daily subsistence and development. It is predicted that in 2025, global wheat production will reach 805.3 million metric tons, and the world will generate 181 zettabytes (1 zettabyte = 1 billion terabytes) of data. *

Chow and Lin are a Singapore artist duo focused on the dynamic relationship between human phenomena and their underlying systems. Leveraging backgrounds in economics, statistics, engineering and media, they create powerful visual explorations of global issues. In their 15-year art practice, they have been studying food systems, socio-economic structures and information methods in different countries, leading them to investigate wheat and data as core building blocks of food and information systems. The artists probe into the parallels and intersections between wheat and data, revealing the support structures and agential role of humans within the system architectures.

Beneath the idealised imagery of uniform sunlit wheat fields and dense data streams lie complexities of operational technologies, trade and finance linkages, geopolitical landscapes, climatic ecological trends and ethical standards. Wheat and data represent two systems which have shaped human cognition, social interactions and world order in the past, present and into the future. These systems do not operate in isolation but have overlapping areas of resource needs, impact drivers and interdependencies. Deliberate human interventions to wheat including breeding, mechanized sowing and trade enable our enable transformation and transfer of calorific energy and nutrients from earth to table. Increasingly, the planting, distribution and consumption of wheat and food crops rely on decision-making support provided by big data. Meanwhile, data collection, transmission and application rely on physical infrastructure, electrical power and allocation of human resources.

The exhibition engages the audience to expand and explore the two systems – with an extensive display of research akin to big data, laborious grinding of wheat using a traditional stone mill, AI-generated food visions, equalized valuation of food and data, and an auditory and olfactory experience. Through open and tangible encounters, it invites a reconsideration of the relationships between humans, food, data and systems. How do these links affect our daily lives and future? Who is cultivating or being cultivated? How are human senses changing in an increasingly virtual and data-driven world? How do we understand our position within these systemic constructs?

Wheat and data, and their connected systems, lead into larger dynamic systems. Stories of structures, connections and values spun from abstractive elements which seem almost as inconspicuous as grass.

 By Pang Yujing

*Source of information on wheat and data in the text:

1. Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, Cereal Supply and Demand Brief, 2025-7-4, https://www.fao.org/worldfoodsituation/csdb/zh；

2. EXPLODING TOPICS, Amount of Data Created Daily (2025), 2025-4-24, https://explodingtopics.com/blog/data-generated-per-day.