About
Fuelled by the world’s peculiarities, Nigel questions the familiar and reframes what often goes unnoticed. Working across photography, videography and design, he uses visual storytelling to engage with sensitive and often overlooked subjects, challenging social norms and enabling alternative ways of seeing.
Rather than focusing on outcomes, his practice leans into reflection. Through visual storytelling, he creates experiences that give people time to pause and consider how they make sense of situations, facilitating conversations that often remain unspoken.
Grounded in advocacy and a curiosity about what society could become, his work positions design as a catalyst for dialogue and meaningful change.
What does it mean for people to recognise how they make decisions before participating, and in doing so, feel a sense of empowerment?
Empowerment Within
Empowerment Within explores how decisions are made in everyday situations within the context of participation.
While participation is often positioned as something to be increased or encouraged, this project questions whether it truly reflects an individual’s choice. Rather than reducing decisions to binary outcomes, this project focuses on the conditions that shape how individuals arrive at them.
Developed through a series of interactive explorations that make decision-making visible, This or That presents participants with minimal context, encouraging instinctive responses. In doing so, it reveals how quickly decisions can be made, often without full awareness of what informs them.
Depends Lah builds on this by introducing situational scenarios, where participants respond using 'emotion cards'. Here, four emotional reactions emerge—'I’m comfortable', 'I’m not comfortable', 'It depends' and 'Anything is fine'. These responses reflect how decisions can shift depending on context and personal interpretation.
These explorations culminate in an interactive arcade installation featuring animated scenarios that bring decision making into a more visualised and embodied experience. Participants are placed within familiar situations, such as being invited out for coffee, and respond through the same four emotional reactions introduced in Depends Lah. Rather than functioning as fixed emotional reactions, these responses reflect the different ways a person might approach making a decision after encountering the scenario.
Across all three formats, Empowerment Within surfaces a key observation: decisions are not always deliberate, and participation does not necessarily indicate willingness. Choosing to engage may stem from ease, habit or social expectation, while opting out may reflect personal boundaries rather than disengagement.
By shifting attention away from outcomes and toward the process of deciding, the work reframes decision-making as something situational and often unseen.
Empowerment Within does not aim to provide solutions or increase participation. Instead, it invites a reconsideration of how participation is interpreted. By making the act of choosing more visible, it opens up space for individuals to better understand one another. In doing so, it positions agency and the act of choosing as a form of empowerment, prompting us to consider what it means to recognise agency in the decisions we make.
Irene Chua reading her 'emotion card' after completing a scenario from Depends Lah.
Research methodology and theoretical framework
An observational and interpretive approach was used to understand how empowerment emerges through decision making. Focus is placed on moments leading up to participation, where shifts in confidence, hesitation and response begin to surface. This or That and Depends Lah were used as hybrid research tools, combining conversational interviews with participatory activities to observe decision making as it unfolded.
How does empowerment feel?
Attention is given to moments of hesitation, revision or decisiveness. This includes observing whether participants second guess, adjust or confidently maintain their choices.
How does empowerment sound?
Verbal interactions are considered, particularly whether participants seek clarification, negotiate the rules or simplify the activity on their own terms.
How does empowerment appear?
Decision making patterns are examined through how choices unfold. This includes whether they are linear, exploratory or revisited over time.
Together, these observations trace the journey of decision making, revealing empowerment as something that emerges before participation takes place.
Tee Ling Wah
Lim Bridget
Tan Yee Jing
Dionne Yeo
Andrea Lau
Elijah Chia
