Lighting up lives

As part of its annual celebration of the Wan Qing Mid-Autumn Festival - which began on Monday and ends on Oct 11 - the Sun Yat Sen Nanyang Memorial Hall is presenting a special outdoor lantern installation (above) done in collaboration with Hong Kong-based artist Sunny Tam of the collectible label 78JO.

Titled Rolling In Abundance, the installation features four 1.5m-tall fish lanterns inspired by the label's Ballballfish collectibles.

In Chinese culture, fish ("yu") symbolises completeness and abundance, as the word for it is a homonym for the Mandarin word for "abundance" ("yu"). The rounded nature of the design is doubly symbolic, as roundness ("yuan") also sounds similar to the Mandarin word for "reunion" ("tuan yuan"), and pays homage to the full and bright mid-autumn moon.

The installation will be open to the public until Oct 11.

Join ST's Telegram channel and get the latest breaking news delivered to you.

A version of this article appeared in the print edition of The Straits Times on September 17, 2020, with the headline Lighting up lives. Subscribe