Identity]]> History]]> Min-Wei Ting]]> Viknesh Kobinathan]]> Transcript]]> Southeast Asia]]> Diaspora]]> Feminism]]> Identity]]> Indigenous Knowledge]]> Citra Sasmita]]> Diaspora]]> Feminism]]> Identity]]> Indigenous Knowledge]]> Postcolonialism]]> 4 April - 1 July 2022
Artist-in-Residence at WIELS (Belgium, Brussels)

In encountering Balinese cultural artifacts brought to European museums during the colonial period and examining the cultural diplomacy politics enacted by the colonizers, she aims to excavate pre-colonial Balinese culture and understand how the perspectives and aesthetic criteria formed under colonial rule persist until today. The artist is interested in developing a critical reading of the journey of colonial legacies into the present and in understanding how they still inform contemporary cultural consciousness.

By providing her with direct access to historical archives and museum collections, the residency will allow Citra to deepen her understanding of the influence of Dutch colonial power onto the development of visual arts and culture in Bali.

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Citra Sasmita]]> Southeast Asia]]> Europe]]>
Archival Practice]]> Artistic Research]]> Identity]]> Knowledge Production]]> Capitalism]]> 23 Sep 2016, Fri 7:00pm - 11:00pm
24 Sep 2016, Sat 2:00pm - 7:00pm
Residencies studios, Blocks 37 & 38 Malan Road

Residencies: OPEN offers a rare insight into the often introverted sphere of the artists’ studio. Through showcasing discussions, performances, research and works-in-progress, Residencies: OPEN profiles the diversity of contemporary art practice and the divergent ways artists conceive artwork with the studio as a constant space for experimentation and contemplation.

Antariksa, Block 38, Malan Road, Studio #01-05

As part of his residency at the NTU CCA Singapore, Antariksa researches the history of the Japanese Occupation (1942-1945) in Singapore. He is especially interested in collecting historical evidence of the propaganda strategies pursued by the occupiers and compare them with the forms of resistance and alternative visual strategies developed by the artists at the time. This project is part of a wider study on the history of art collectivism in Asia under the Japanese Occupation.

The presentation of archival material and images in his studio has been made possible thanks to the National Archives of Singapore.

Heman Chong, Block 38, Malan Road, Studio #01-07

The Library of Unread Books
Ongoing project

The Library of Unread Books is Heman Chong’s long-term project: a members-only reference library made up of donated books that are unread by their previous owners. The cost of a lifetime membership to the library is the donation of a single unread book. In keeping with the artist’s intimate longing for a space to go to in the dead of the night to encounter books he has never thought of reading, “night passes” will also be issued for visitors and the Library will be open for 24 hours every Friday night from 7.00pm to 7.00pm the next day.

Chong is a Singaporean artist, writer, and curator whose practice develops across a variety of media. He often works as a facilitator of situations in which new narratives and modes of intellectual exchange are enacted to rethink conventional modes of sharing and transmitting knowledge. Since 2003, he has been interested in negotiating public space as a site of speech. For his six-month research at the NTU CCA Residencies Programme, he intends to turn his studio into an artist-run space where other artists can present their works, gather for discussion, and find a quiet space for contemplation.

Ho Rui An, Block 37, Malan Road, Studio #01-03

IN-RESIDENCE
2014
HD video
17 min 30 sec

Produced during a residency on-board a transatlantic vessel, the video interweaves two layers of time experienced by the artist during the month-long journey: that of being “in-residence” and that of being “on expedition”. Two literary characters serve as points of reference for the film’s invisible protagonist: the colonial officer Percival from Virginia Woolf’s The Waves (1931) and from Italo Calvino’s novel Mr Palomar (1983). Exploring the dissonance between the sense of nausea experienced by the artist during the residency and the scientific scope of the expedition, the film muses upon representational technologies that turn the natural world into an image.

Ho Rui An is an artist and writer who works at the intersection of contemporary art, cinema, performance, and theory. He writes, talks, and thinks around images investigating their sites of emergence, transmission, and disappearance within the contexts of cultural production. Recently he has focused on the aesthetic form of the “lecture performance” to explore the relationship between art, research, and the circulation of knowledge. During his residency at NTU CCA Singapore, Ho intends to study the aesthetics of “futurecraft” and of “horizon scanning” programmes run both by the state and private entities.

Ato Malinda, Block 37, Malan Road, Studio #01-04

Drawings
2016
Mixed media
Dimensions variable

Since 2012, Ato Malinda has been working on a series of drawings that relate to her innermost feelings and fantasies about gender-related issues. Often inspired by events in her life and in the life of her friends, the drawings outline half-human, half-animal creatures caught up in intimate situations and pensive poses.

On fait ensemble
2010
HD video
10 min

Mami Wata was a water spirit worshipped in Africa long before the arrival of the Europeans. In the 1880s a German hunter married a Southeast Asian woman and brought her to Hamburg where she performed in Völkerschau (human zoo) as a snake charmer. A lithograph of hers was reprinted in Bombay in 1955 and eventually came to West Africa where it was recognised as a portrait of Mami Wata. Re-enacting the arrival of the image in Africa, the artist reflects on the complex patterns of exchange and contamination that determine cultural identities.

The work of Malinda encompasses performance, drawing, painting, installation, video, and ceramic sculpture and investigates the nature of African identity, contesting notions of authenticity as well as fixed assumptions about gender and sexuality. During her residency at the NTU CCA Singapore, she is conducting archival research on the Tang shipwreck — occurred 380 miles off the Singapore Strait around 830 CE — to explore concepts of hybridity and globalisation in relation to Singapore’s history of sea trading and porcelain manufacturing.

Bo Wang, Block 37, Malan Road, Studio #01-02

Spectrum, or the Singapore Dan Flavin
2016
Seven fluorescent tubes

With a formalistic reference to Dan Flavin, seven fluorescent tubes are arranged in a grid structure that propagates different shades of white in the space. The spectrum of white lights are in different colour temperatures, which were sampled from various social spaces in Singapore, from polished restaurant, luxury hotel, to industrial buildings and dormitory of migrant workers.

As a visual artist and a film maker, Bo Wang observes contemporary urban landscapes that are undergoing intensified processes of transformation and excavates the power structures and cultural anxieties related to these accelerated forms of transitions. His work depicts provocative portraits of China examining the ways in which the State retains its authoritarian way of rule while pursuing capitalism. For his residency at NTU CCA Singapore, Wang is researching the politics of space, issues of territorial expansion, and the social implications surrounding the pursuit of sand in Singapore where 22% of her land mass has been reclaimed from the sea through sand acquired from neighbouring countries.

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Antariksa]]> Heman Chong]]> Ho Rui An]]> Ato Malinda]]> Bo Wang]]> Southeast Asia]]> Asia]]>
Identity]]> Ways of Seeing]]> Jonathas de Andrade]]> South America]]> Good Immigrant, Bad Immigrant by Billy Tang, Senior Curator, Rockbound Art Museum]]> Migration]]> Fiction]]> Identity]]> Diaspora]]> 27 Oct 2020, Tue 05:30 PM - 07:00 PM
Online

This reading group session will be held on Zoom. Sign up here to receive the link and password.

Inspired by the commentary and writings of novelist Viet Thanh Nguyen, this reading group explores the overlapping concepts related to immigration and transnationalism. Moving between reportage, criticism and fiction, it will explore how the framing of good or bad immigrants is intimately tied to questions of belonging, otherness, identity, and empathy. It draws on the archetypal literary figure of the antihero to challenge underlying prejudices, and locate counter-images embodying a more fluid way of identifying with transnational experiences around the world.

 

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Billy Tang]]> Asia]]>
Diaspora]]> Identity]]> Migration]]> Xiaolu Guo]]> Asia]]> Europe]]> Diaspora]]> Displacement]]> Migration]]> Globalisation]]> Geopolitics]]> Identity]]> 4 October 2021 - 31 March 2022
NTU CCA Singapore]]>
Yeo Siew Hua]]> Southeast Asia]]>
Archival Practice]]> History]]> Identity]]> Topography]]> Ways of Seeing]]> 4 April - 31 August 2022
NTU CCA Singapore]]>
Fazleen Karlan]]> Southeast Asia]]>
Archival Practice]]> History]]> Identity]]> Knowledge Production]]> Topography]]> Ways of Seeing]]> In this episode, curator Samantha Yap digs deep into the practice of Artist-in-Residence Fazleen Karlan. We are happy to bring the two of them back together, after they first collaborated a couple of year ago on an exhibition titled Time Passes (2020-21), to talk about Fazleen’s evolving artistic sensibility and sources of inspiration.

In this circular conversation that revolves around a shared reading, the novel Lighthousekeeping by Jeanette Winterson, Fazleen and Samantha exchange memories, experiences, and thoughts about time, materiality, pop culture, and the vitality of archaeology in Fazleen’s work. And they do so with that special kind of fluid intimacy that interlaces persons of the same age. Just a few words to introduce them.

Contributors: Fazleen Karlan, Samantha Yap
Editor: Anna Lovecchio
Programme Manager: Nadia Amalina
Sound Engineer: Ashwin Menon
Intro & Outro Music: Yuen Chee Wai
Cover Image & Design: Arabelle Zhuang, Kristine Tan

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Fazleen Karlan]]> Samantha Yap]]> Anna Lovecchio]]> Nadia Amalina]]> Ashwin Menon]]> Yuen Chee Wai]]> Podcast]]> https://www.buzzsprout.com/1845756/11089842-aircast-8-fazleen-karlan]]> Southeast Asia]]>