Singapore's Best Institutional Shows to See Early 2024
Cécile B. Evans, Hyperlinks or It Didn't Happen (2014). Single-channel video installation (colour, sound). 23 min. Collection of the artist. Exhibition view: Proof of Personhood, Singapore Art Museum (22 September 2023–25 February 2024). Courtesy Singapore Art Museum.
Singapore Art Week brings over 150 events to the island from 19 to 28 January. From Ho Tzu Nyen's mid-career survey at Singapore Art Museum to an inquiry into Afro-Asian diasporic synergies organised by The Institutum, below, we share five exhibitions to see.
Ho Tzu Nyen: Time & the Tiger
Singapore Art Museum, 39 Keppel Road, #01-02
24 November 2023–3 March 2024
Expect: a survey covering two decades of the artist's theoretically rigorous work that unravels Southeast Asian histories and multiplicities.
Singaporean artist Ho Tzu Nyen is known for deconstructing and questioning dominant accounts of national histories and regional mythologies.
Integral to Ho's practice is The Critical Dictionary of Southeast Asia (2012–ongoing), exhibited at SAM as a video installation and accessible online, which uses the English alphabet as an index to rethink Southeast Asia's propagated regional unity.
Ho's mid-career survey delves into the histories of tropes and characters who possess multiple, even contradictory identities. These include the shapeshifting Malayan tiger and historical figures such as Saṅg Nīla Utama, the pre-colonial founder of Singapore, and Lai Teck, a triple agent with over 30 aliases who once led the Malayan Communist Party.
Taking place over two galleries, the exhibition prominently features Ho's video installations, alongside lenticular prints and works on paper. Of note is T for Time (2023–ongoing), a new two-channel video commission which reflects on a central concern in Ho's work: time as a subjective and embodied experience.
Tropical: Stories from Southeast Asia and Latin America
National Gallery Singapore, 1 St Andrew's Road
18 November 2023–24 March 2024
Expect: a speculative comparison of the arts and histories of Southeast Asia and Latin America, as portrayed by modern and contemporary artists.
Tropical is a group exhibition that compares the artistic traditions and histories of two distant geographies: Southeast Asia and Latin America.
Making connections between the two regions' struggles against colonialism, the exhibition revisits cultural assumptions while also showcasing how artists of the time reclaimed their agency through self-portraiture. One such stereotype that is scrutinised is the 'lazy native' who lounges in exotic, idyllic landscapes—propagated by the paintings of artists such as Paul Gauguin.
'The scenes were fantasies that [Gauguin] pieced together, and we can see how these images went on to be pertinent in the story of Modern art,' curator Teo Hui Min told Ocula Magazine.
Presenting more than 200 artworks, including painting, drawing, sculpture, books, posters, and immersive installations by artists such as David Medalla, Lygia Clark, and Hélio Oiticica, Tropical invites viewers to locate inspiration and knowledge beyond European art history.
Proof of Personhood
Singapore Art Museum, 39 Keppel Road, #01-02
22 September 2023–25 February 2024
Expect: new media works that investigate the nature of subjectivity in the 21st century, as machines increasingly deploy artificial intelligence.
Will machines eventually replace humans? Can a machine feel human emotions and exercise choice and free will? Proof of Personhood is a group exhibition of contemporary art that tackles these prevalent generational anxieties.
The exhibited artists engage with both human and non-human subjects, and embrace technologies such as interactive software, genetic engineering, and AI-synthesised images to comment on the shifting nature of personhood and authenticity in a digital age.
In her video work, THE YOUNG BODY UNIVERSE (2021–2023), Singaporean artist Charmaine Poh explores avatar creation as a way to repair past traumas. Poh creates a deepfake character to deliver a feminist critique of misogyny in online spaces and invites audiences to share their vulnerabilities via an interactive chatbot.
Passages
NTU CCA Singapore, Block 38 Malan Road
28 November 2023–28 January 2024
Expect: multimedia works by three artists from Southeast Asia, influenced by their residencies in European cultural institutions.
As part of a residency programme developed by NTU CCA Singapore and supported by the European Union, artists Priyageetha Dia, Ngoc Nau, and Saroot Supasuthivech respectively undertook summer residencies at Jan van Eyck Academie (Netherlands), Rupert (Lithuania), and Künstlerhaus Bethanien (Germany). In this exhibition, the artists present new multimedia works, made upon their return to Asia, that draw from their specific cross-cultural experiences.
Extending her interest in Southeast Asia's colonial and plantation histories, Dia rendered archival images from a rubber planting company, sourced from the archives of Amsterdam's Rijksmuseum, into a four-channel sound installation titled Sap Sonic (2023), which brings to life the unspoken narratives of plantation workers.
Ngoc Nau's new video Virtual Reverie: Echoes of a Forgotten Utopia (2023) juxtaposes elements of post-Soviet architecture and realities of Lithuania and her native Vietnam. The video foregrounds the artist's digitally rendered version of the Vietnam-Soviet Friendship Palace of Culture and Labour in Hanoi as a stage for a symbolic journey through time.
Saroot Supasuthivech's multimedia installation Spirit-forward in G Major (2023) tells the stories of Thai expatriates in Germany. Following the cycle of life, death, and rebirth, the narrative transforms and conveys the artist's primary research, such as his interviews with Thai monks and nuns in Berlin.
Translations: Afro-Asian Poetics
The Institutum, L3, 9 Lock Road
18–30 January 2024
Expect: a six-venue exhibition that unearths cultural synergies between Asian and African diasporas through modern and contemporary artworks.
Featuring work by over 100 artists from Asia, Africa, and their diasporas—including El Anatsui, Theaster Gates, Do Ho Suh, and Sonia Boyce—Translations explores and celebrates the commonalities between Afro-Asian diasporic cultures.
Sourced from private collections and organised by Singapore-based non-profit The Institutum, the exhibition offers a rare opportunity to 'illuminate the threads that weave us together as people, transcending linguistic and cultural barriers,' as curator Zoé Whitley explained.
The exhibition builds on writings of scholars such as Joan Kee and her recently published work The Geometries of Afro Asia (2023). In it, Kee asks a central question: 'What might an art history that is more receptive to the roughly three-quarters of the world's population who call Africa or Asia home, or who identify as Asian and/or Black, look like?'
The exhibition will also partner with culinary establishments such as the Michelin-starred Restaurant Nouri to present 'a crossroad of Afro-Asian flavours', and ice-cream brand Creamier to introduce a new flavour inspired by the exhibition's 'essence'. —[O]
