Sandbox — Basmah Felemban

Sandbox, 2024wood, sand, 3D printing
Sculpture Catfish Corals

This work takes its title from video game development lexicon. A ‘sandbox game’ is a video game with a gameplay element that provides players a great degree of creativity to interact with, usually without any predetermined goal, or alternatively with a goal that the players set for themselves. Sandbox games are often associated with an open world concept which gives the players freedom of movement and progression in the game's world. The term "sandbox" derives from the nature of a sandbox that lets people create nearly anything they want within it. The work is formally and conceptually inspired by Sandplay Therapy, a nonverbal, therapeutic intervention that makes use of a sandbox, toy figures, and sometimes water, to create scenes of miniature worlds that reflect a person’s inner thoughts, struggles, and concerns. By combining these two fields, the artist looks at the role imagination and narrative play in world-building.