About
BOOTH ASTER
Creating magnificence
My name is Joanne Flinn.
I create wings.
Not metaphorical ones — real, physical wings. From silk, from repurposed luxury garments, from materials that once served one purpose and now serve something far more extraordinary.
A Vivienne Westwood dress becomes a sculptural wing installation. A Laurel suit that closed a quarter-million-dollar deal becomes art that floats from a wall. Traditional kabayas from Malaysia and Indonesia become a three-dimensional meditation on duality.
Each set of wings balances on a single point. Some take three weeks to achieve. Some take nine. All of them remind us: magnificence isn't found. It's built from knowing what to keep and what to shed.
The Work
Exhibited internationally.
My textile sculptures and installation art have been exhibited at the ArtScience Museum, the Asian Civilisations Museum, the Museum of Art and Design, and venues across the USA, Spain, Germany, the UK, Italy, Greece, Hong Kong, Indonesia, and Australia.
I was Artist in Residence for TEDx Singapore, where I created Gaia's Wings — an 8-metre installation for the five-storey foyer of the ArtScience Museum.
My piece Voluptuousness of the Soul was shortlisted for Harper's Bazaar's Art Prize. My art exists in collections on four continents.
I work primarily in repurposed luxury textiles — silk, organza, hand-dyed fabrics — handmaking contemporary textile sculpture that transforms the discarded into the extraordinary.
The Practice
Art and strategy — one practice.
The art isn't separate from what I do professionally. The same practice that creates a wing installation from a Vivienne Westwood dress helps leaders transform what they have into what they need.
Thinkers50 named me to their 2026 Radar for exactly this integration. They called it "building wings, not just horns."
An Earlier Exhibition
Enter an artist studio-exhibition
Booth Aster — an earlier exhibition
Why an artist name?
Writers have nom de plume. Actors have stage names. Visual artists have a long tradition of names that reflect what they're about. In Japan, it's established practice — Hokusai changed his name thirty times.
Booth
A temporary space.
Aster
The old Greek word for the stars — the home of the gods, the eternal, and the magnificent.
A temporary space reaching toward the magnificent. That's the work.
The path to magnificence
I learnt the expressive language of art as an adult. I grew up speaking science.
My father was a senior scientist at a global agricultural research institute. Thanks to this, I'd lived on five continents by the time I was twelve.
Three things I take from those years:
Committed people create the impossible. Those scientists were given the challenge of solving world hunger in three generations. It took one. Look up the Green Revolution, IRRI and IITA.
Relationships centre you in turbulence. Nine schools, seven countries and five revolutions later, my parents, two sisters and an African grey parrot were stability. Family and friends centred me then. They centre me now.
Culture, values and people fascinate me. The vibrancy of markets in Nigeria where our luxury dining was Lebanese. In Europe, discovering my accent was neither English nor French. In Asia, the very different value systems of the East.
I have five degrees. I love science and technology. I've explored AI, 3D printing and blockchain. I discuss tensile strength and counterbalances with engineers. I've authored several books on business growth, change and disruption. My most beloved: RICE, which I illustrated for my mother. She had collected stories about rice from sixteen countries during her travels thirty years earlier with my father. That book made it to the Asian Civilisations Museum.
Forty-eight countries. Five continents. A Master of Science from HEC Paris and Oxford. A law degree from Tasmania. And one day, a challenge: could I paint the music?
If you're reading this far, we've connected at some level. I'd welcome that.
TEDx
Artist in Residence, TEDx Singapore
TEDx Singapore
Booth Aster — TEDx Singapore
TEDx
Booth Aster — TEDx Talk
As Seen In & Commissioned By
Showcased
ArtScience Museum
Conrad Hotel Singapore
Asian Civilisations Museum
Heritage Education
Museum of Art & Design
Harper's Bazaar ArtArtScience MuseumConrad Hotel SingaporeAsian Civilisations MuseumHeritage EducationMuseum of Art & DesignHarper's Bazaar ArtMagnificence is always possible.
Whether it's wings for your boardroom, a site-specific installation for a public space or hotel lobby, or a conversation about what art can do — I'd like to hear from you.
Let's explore what's possible →