​​Souvenir City challenges international university students, who frequently travel, to rethink the conventional nature of their travel keepsakes. This experimental souvenir collection is designed to go beyond mere kitschy mementoes , pushing the boundaries through scanning that stretches and transforms familiar visuals into abstract art. These personally curated pieces invite students to see their travel experiences through a new, thought-provoking lens, highlighting how authenticity and meaning in souvenirs emerge from personal interaction and reflection.

What do you mean by reconsidering our commodified tourist experiences?

I feel like whenever people travel, they kind of have a preconceived, romanticised view of a place. If I'm gonna go to Bali, it's going to be all greenery, peaceful, all that. But when you get there, it's like chaos. It doesn't fit their expectations. And this is the same scenario with every place because every place wants to show their best versions of themselves, similar to how people do it on social media. And I feel like the purpose is to shed light on that and make people think of it in a different way.

Same with all these souvenirs. Based on my research, a lot of them are made in big factories where they don't really care about and consider the places’ identity and all those nuances of their culture. So I feel that it’s kind of ironic that I'm taking these souvenirs and then I'm adding my own personal meaning and effect to it, and I'm creating souvenirs out of those souvenirs. It's kind of like a fun, ironic effect, but it also makes people think differently of how they see those typical souvenirs that you see. Generally, when you go to airports or those markets, you're gonna see very similar-looking souvenirs, and I want it to look a different way and have people embed their own meaning into it at the end of the day.

Why do you think people value these souvenirs if they're cheap, ugly, and badly made?

There's different reasons for even acquiring souvenirs to begin with. One of the main ones is gifting. People like to gift ugly souvenirs to their friends to be like, “oh look, an ugly shot glass” as a joke. Another way is actually being thoughtful to someone, “I've been here and it reminds me of you”, type of thing.

Another one could be just to simply prove you've been there. For example, in my family, we have a collection of mugs. We've collected across different places just to show that, “I've been to all these places. Look at me. I'm kind of great.” Kind of an ego thing, I realise.

Another reason I think is just for memory's sake. I personally have a memory box of things I've collected over the years, and I look back at it and then it triggers certain memories. In that case, it doesn't have to be typical souvenirs. It could be a bus stamp, or a ticket. And I think it's kind of a family thing as well. My family just loves to collect souvenirs for some reason, especially the fridge ones. And we have a huge wall of ugly souvenirs back in my place in Manila. And this was like a huge wall of ugly souvenirs. It's not even, they buy one, they buy like two or three. I see different versions of Taipei, for example. They look different, but I don't know why they have to buy that many. I feel like it's a family thing that's being passed on, or a tradition in some sort of way.