O Dear What Can The Matter Be is the first solo exhibition by Singaporean artist Stephanie Burt in which she transforms the gallery into an interior environment whereintimacies, vulnerabilities and instabilities are left to unfold through a material language of the domestic, the decorative, and the everyday. The starting point of the project is the short story The Yellow Wallpaper written by the American feminist novelist and social reformer, Charlotte Perkins Gilman and published in 1899. In the context of this story, the act of women's writing becomes a strategy to undermine and dismantle the solid foundation of a repressive system.

Metal, iron, wood and wire meet ribbon, wool, thread and lace. In this unexpected encounter, between the harshness and softness of materials, a play of attraction and rejection, stability and vulnerability emerges. Metal or wood structures are often fixed with ribbons or thin threads, at a closer look, what appears to be solid is in fact on the verge of collapse. Frictions and tensions in Burt’s works derive not only from the juxtaposition of different, contrasting materials, but also from the choreography of gestures to which they are subjected. Gestures of pulling, stretching, and pressure exerted on the materials test not only their physical properties, but also their psychological state. The apparent sense of balance and stability in Burt's installations, and the visual narratives of fairytales and magical spaces are undermined by the emotional state of these constructions caught in a moment of vulnerability and restlessness. The contrast between the joyful aesthetic of the materials painted in vivid, bright colours and the fragility of the construction, broadens the gap between what is perceived from outside and what is experienced from within.