Ceci n’est pas une exposition: an experiment by Isabelle Desjeux
Dublin Core
Title
Ceci n’est pas une exposition: an experiment by Isabelle Desjeux
Description
Ceci n’est pas une exposition. This is not an exhibition. Perhaps this sounds like a counter-intuitive way to introduce an exhibition, or a space like this that has a lot in common with exhibitions.
So if this is not an exhibition, what is it? The French word “expérience,” sounds like the English word “experience,” but translates to “experiment.” It is definitely both an experiment and an experience. It is also a project, comprising interactive gallery-based installations and the activation of the ideas explored in those installations through related programmes. We borrow the idea that “Ceci n’est pas…” or “this is not…what it seems to be” from the Belgian artist René Magritte (1898-1967). Hopefully, this invites us to think about what is possible when one looks beyond what seems to be, and instead thinks about what could be.
Ceci n’est pas une exhibition, but it is art, it is science, it is play, it is imagination, it is nature, it is technology, and it is, above all, an invitation, and a space to be activated by your presence and participation.
This project presents the work of Dr Isabelle Desjeux, an artist, scientist, and educator who spent 25 years in Singapore, from 1999 to 2024. The project is simultaneously a reflection on her training as a molecular biologist, her experiences making art and building community, and a proposition for things that are yet to come. Things that she will do, and things that she hopes that you will take in new directions. Now, having recently relocated to Sweden, she is certain that some aspects of her practice in Singapore will adapt to her new environment, and some will not be transplantable.
Desjeux’s interests in following questions down meandering paths, tapping into curiosity about the environment, and in sharing meaningful experiences with others are common threads throughout her work for the past 25 years. This project invites you to be part of these experiences—not by simply viewing or learning from the installation areas within the gallery, but by participating in them, and making them your own. If you are ready to start down some meandering paths, you should stop reading here, and jump right into the experiment!
For those of you who are interested to learn more, here are a few more facts and speculations about this work, and the artist-scientist behind them.
The works in these galleries are just some of the many projects that Isabelle embarked upon while in Singapore. They were selected for this presentation as some of the pieces that best embody her way of working by collaborating with and learning from others; her interest in iterating projects in different spaces and contexts; and her genuine curiosity for the world.
Isabelle enjoys the quote by filmmaker Agnes Varda that, “I don’t want to show things, but give people the desire to see.”
You might see evidence of Isabelle’s own interest in giving people the “desire to see” in her work with lenses and modes of refracting images. In her playful explorations of cameras through low-tech manipulations of light inside the gallery you will find variations on the camera obscura – the term for a “dark chamber” in Latin and an important ancestor of the photographic camera that dates back to antiquity. The simple design of a camera obscura projects an inverted image of the outside world into a darkened space via a small opening.
Isabelle’s series of cameras obscura include both small scale sculptural objects designed to be worn over the viewer’s head (her series of papier-maché cameras include a teapot and several objects that look like aquatic creatures!) and larger-scale chambers that visitors can step inside. Her experiments with pinhole cameras operate on the same principle, using a small light-proof chamber containing light-sensitive paper and the timed uncovering of a small pinhole to expose that paper and make it a photograph – an image “written in light.” To see the image, this paper would have to be developed in a darkroom, which is another one of Isabelle’s objects that you will encounter: a light proof box that is small enough to carry out into the world. This wooden crate has been outfitted with the legs of well-worn jeans to cover the photographer’s arms and a small red viewing window that allows viewers to peer at the evolving photograph inside while filtering out the wavelengths of light that would overexpose the paper inside. Like many of her objects, this one begs multiple questions. Is it a work of engineering? A work of design? A work of art? Is it a tool to create something else, or an object of curiosity in its own right?
In the section dedicated to cameras, you will also find a fuchsia jumpsuit worn by Isabelle on her daily visits to neighbourhood community spaces for the Lengkok Bahru Pinhole Project (2019). Can an article of clothing be a way of making images? Is the invitation for community members to co-create photographs about the images themselves, or the relationships that can be formed by coming together to look at the world differently?
Nearby to the artists’ cameras, we find the Insect Inventorium (2023-2024), presented as a collaboration with the artist Quek See Yee. This project involves looking at and getting to know insects that have already been studied by entomologists, then using materials gathered from the natural world to imagine and visualise insects that might someday be discovered or known to us. Is the artist-scientist’s role to observe, or to speculate? Is it possible to do one without the other? Is science, or art, a fundamentally solitary endeavour, or a group activity?
On the other side of the gallery’s partition wall, an assortment of Isabelle’s “interactive objects” including a scarecrow and a large bird mask, bring up slightly different questions about our modes of engaging with the world around us. Does a functional scarecrow, activated by the weight of birds resting on it, protect us from or bring us in dialogue with our avian neighbours? How can interactivity remind us of how we are animals and sensory beings, part of the ecosystems in which we live?
In another section of the gallery, we encounter the House of Weeds (2020-2024), presented as a collaboration with the artist Debbie Ding. This project explores local weeds as botanical specimens brought together as subjects to be observed and investigated (especially by small observers of the world!), and as components of a sonic machine that integrates these plants into its electrical circuitry. Is it an interactive art installation? An educational experience? An example of citizen science? A carefully engineered series of surprises?
At the entrance to the gallery, we find Heavealogy – a series of works related to the study of the Parà rubber tree, Hevea brasiliensis. This series is simultaneously an investigation and portrait of the plant itself, including its exploding seeds, and research into why and how this type of tree was planted in Singapore, Malaysia, and Thailand. It also provokes questions of what our understanding of this plant might mean for our future, and the future of the ecosystem in which it grows. In 1000 Rubber Seeds and One Mutant, one of the works in this series, we see some of the threads of Isabelle’s practice woven together—her facility with photographic imaging, her curiosity for the interactions of nature and culture in Singapore and Southeast Asia, and her experience as scientific researcher with extensive knowledge of genetics. All of this is brought together by her humorous sensibility and penchant for finding inspiration and true beauty in the absurd and the counterintuitive. An artist-scientist who has operated in the formal and informal spaces of both art and science, and someone who has been part of the Institute of Unnecessary Research as the Head of Failure and later the Head of Curiosity Awareness, Isabelle Desjeux asks questions, experiments with process, gleefully deviates from plans, and invites others to do the same. In the artists’ book written to accompany the Heavealogy project in 2018 she invites and implores her readers to: “Ask questions with CURIOSITY, seek answers with EXCITEMENT, but leave a place for FAILURE in your interpretations.”
So if this is not an exhibition, what is it? The French word “expérience,” sounds like the English word “experience,” but translates to “experiment.” It is definitely both an experiment and an experience. It is also a project, comprising interactive gallery-based installations and the activation of the ideas explored in those installations through related programmes. We borrow the idea that “Ceci n’est pas…” or “this is not…what it seems to be” from the Belgian artist René Magritte (1898-1967). Hopefully, this invites us to think about what is possible when one looks beyond what seems to be, and instead thinks about what could be.
Ceci n’est pas une exhibition, but it is art, it is science, it is play, it is imagination, it is nature, it is technology, and it is, above all, an invitation, and a space to be activated by your presence and participation.
This project presents the work of Dr Isabelle Desjeux, an artist, scientist, and educator who spent 25 years in Singapore, from 1999 to 2024. The project is simultaneously a reflection on her training as a molecular biologist, her experiences making art and building community, and a proposition for things that are yet to come. Things that she will do, and things that she hopes that you will take in new directions. Now, having recently relocated to Sweden, she is certain that some aspects of her practice in Singapore will adapt to her new environment, and some will not be transplantable.
Desjeux’s interests in following questions down meandering paths, tapping into curiosity about the environment, and in sharing meaningful experiences with others are common threads throughout her work for the past 25 years. This project invites you to be part of these experiences—not by simply viewing or learning from the installation areas within the gallery, but by participating in them, and making them your own. If you are ready to start down some meandering paths, you should stop reading here, and jump right into the experiment!
For those of you who are interested to learn more, here are a few more facts and speculations about this work, and the artist-scientist behind them.
The works in these galleries are just some of the many projects that Isabelle embarked upon while in Singapore. They were selected for this presentation as some of the pieces that best embody her way of working by collaborating with and learning from others; her interest in iterating projects in different spaces and contexts; and her genuine curiosity for the world.
Isabelle enjoys the quote by filmmaker Agnes Varda that, “I don’t want to show things, but give people the desire to see.”
You might see evidence of Isabelle’s own interest in giving people the “desire to see” in her work with lenses and modes of refracting images. In her playful explorations of cameras through low-tech manipulations of light inside the gallery you will find variations on the camera obscura – the term for a “dark chamber” in Latin and an important ancestor of the photographic camera that dates back to antiquity. The simple design of a camera obscura projects an inverted image of the outside world into a darkened space via a small opening.
Isabelle’s series of cameras obscura include both small scale sculptural objects designed to be worn over the viewer’s head (her series of papier-maché cameras include a teapot and several objects that look like aquatic creatures!) and larger-scale chambers that visitors can step inside. Her experiments with pinhole cameras operate on the same principle, using a small light-proof chamber containing light-sensitive paper and the timed uncovering of a small pinhole to expose that paper and make it a photograph – an image “written in light.” To see the image, this paper would have to be developed in a darkroom, which is another one of Isabelle’s objects that you will encounter: a light proof box that is small enough to carry out into the world. This wooden crate has been outfitted with the legs of well-worn jeans to cover the photographer’s arms and a small red viewing window that allows viewers to peer at the evolving photograph inside while filtering out the wavelengths of light that would overexpose the paper inside. Like many of her objects, this one begs multiple questions. Is it a work of engineering? A work of design? A work of art? Is it a tool to create something else, or an object of curiosity in its own right?
In the section dedicated to cameras, you will also find a fuchsia jumpsuit worn by Isabelle on her daily visits to neighbourhood community spaces for the Lengkok Bahru Pinhole Project (2019). Can an article of clothing be a way of making images? Is the invitation for community members to co-create photographs about the images themselves, or the relationships that can be formed by coming together to look at the world differently?
Nearby to the artists’ cameras, we find the Insect Inventorium (2023-2024), presented as a collaboration with the artist Quek See Yee. This project involves looking at and getting to know insects that have already been studied by entomologists, then using materials gathered from the natural world to imagine and visualise insects that might someday be discovered or known to us. Is the artist-scientist’s role to observe, or to speculate? Is it possible to do one without the other? Is science, or art, a fundamentally solitary endeavour, or a group activity?
On the other side of the gallery’s partition wall, an assortment of Isabelle’s “interactive objects” including a scarecrow and a large bird mask, bring up slightly different questions about our modes of engaging with the world around us. Does a functional scarecrow, activated by the weight of birds resting on it, protect us from or bring us in dialogue with our avian neighbours? How can interactivity remind us of how we are animals and sensory beings, part of the ecosystems in which we live?
In another section of the gallery, we encounter the House of Weeds (2020-2024), presented as a collaboration with the artist Debbie Ding. This project explores local weeds as botanical specimens brought together as subjects to be observed and investigated (especially by small observers of the world!), and as components of a sonic machine that integrates these plants into its electrical circuitry. Is it an interactive art installation? An educational experience? An example of citizen science? A carefully engineered series of surprises?
At the entrance to the gallery, we find Heavealogy – a series of works related to the study of the Parà rubber tree, Hevea brasiliensis. This series is simultaneously an investigation and portrait of the plant itself, including its exploding seeds, and research into why and how this type of tree was planted in Singapore, Malaysia, and Thailand. It also provokes questions of what our understanding of this plant might mean for our future, and the future of the ecosystem in which it grows. In 1000 Rubber Seeds and One Mutant, one of the works in this series, we see some of the threads of Isabelle’s practice woven together—her facility with photographic imaging, her curiosity for the interactions of nature and culture in Singapore and Southeast Asia, and her experience as scientific researcher with extensive knowledge of genetics. All of this is brought together by her humorous sensibility and penchant for finding inspiration and true beauty in the absurd and the counterintuitive. An artist-scientist who has operated in the formal and informal spaces of both art and science, and someone who has been part of the Institute of Unnecessary Research as the Head of Failure and later the Head of Curiosity Awareness, Isabelle Desjeux asks questions, experiments with process, gleefully deviates from plans, and invites others to do the same. In the artists’ book written to accompany the Heavealogy project in 2018 she invites and implores her readers to: “Ask questions with CURIOSITY, seek answers with EXCITEMENT, but leave a place for FAILURE in your interpretations.”
Exhibition Dates
4 October – 7 November 2024
Free Entrance
Gallery, Level 2
Alliance Française de Singapour
Opening hours
Tuesday to Friday: 1.00 pm – 7.30 pm
Saturday: 9.00 am – 5.00 pm
Artist
Dr Isabelle Desjeux, artist-scientist
Collaborators
Quek See Yee, multidisciplinary designer and art practitioner
Debbie Ding, an artist-scholar
Exhibition Curator
Karin G. Oen
Director, NTU Centre for Contemporary Art Singapore
Date
4 October - 7 November 2024
Exhibition Item Type Metadata
Short Description
Isabelle Desjeux’s project explores image-making through simple camera technology, an “inventorium” of imagined insects, an interactive gathering of local weeds, and a careful study of the Parà rubber tree through its biology and history
Exhibition Mode
Show Type
Location
Offsite
Exhibition Start Date
4 October 2024
Exhibition End Date
7 November 2024
Collaboration
Yes
Commissioned Work
No
Files
Collection
Citation
“Ceci n’est pas une exposition: an experiment by Isabelle Desjeux,” NTU CCA Singapore Digital Archive, accessed February 14, 2025, https://ntuccasingapore.omeka.net/items/show/4637.
Item Relations
Item: Isabelle Desjeux | Is Part Of | This Item |
Item: Quek See Yee | Is Part Of | This Item |
Item: Karin G. Oen | Is Part Of | This Item |
Item: Debbie Ding | Is Part Of | This Item |
Item: Experience and Experimentation: Curiosity and Knowledge Creation in Art and Science | Is Part Of | This Item |