Working at the intersection of sculpture, functional wares, installation and quasi auto-ethnography, Nazerul Ben-Dzulkefli’s interpretation of ALL NATURAL SNAKE OIL resulted in a commentary and a descriptive story-telling of our need for miracles, of hope and hopelessness in times of financial, health and career distress.

This body of work is inspired by a myriad of alternative healing and quack medicine proponents and opponents, family experiences with syncretic multi-faith healers, Singaporean night market animist charm peddlers, prayerful prescriptions, magical heirloom objects, talismans and the global move towards acknowledging and accepting competing cosmologies and ways of knowing.

Who and what do we turn to on these earthly, godly, and ghostly planes of existence as we search for answers, cures and solutions to all our manifest and unseen problems? How far do we cast our nets in hope of miracles and how high do we suspend our disbelief in order to have faith in the empirically improbable?


Davin Ivatts

Fascinated by human psychology and captivated by the processes of print, Davin Ivatts uses a combination of etching and monoprint techniques to build a simple scaffolding to present flashes of ideas, and thoughts. For ALL NATURAL SNAKE OIL, these thoughts circle around observations about the pursuit of growth, and hope for some kind of ‘enlightenment’. All the while trying not to deliver the shallow cliches, banal platitudes, and empty promises of an actual snake oil salesman.