Elaine Chiew, Author at ArtsEquator

Rage or Loss: Women in Photography 2019 | Remedy For Rage

By Elaine Chiew (1,050 words, 6-minute read) Now in its fifth edition, Objectifs returns with its annual showcase in the Women in Film and Photography series. From its early years of blockbuster-ish exhibitions held in conjunction with Magnum or featuring other groups of women photographers, the Objectifs showcase in the last two years has carried […]

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Of Math and Art: “A Game of Numbers” with NUS Arts Festival 2019

By Elaine Chiew (1195 words, five-minute read) ‘A GAME OF NUMBERS’: Elaine Chiew interviews Mary Loh and Professor Victor Tan on the mathematically-themed NUS Arts Festival 2019 believed to be first-ever in Singapore. Organised by NUS Centre For the Arts, a fete of mathematics-themed arts engagements in dance, music, theatre and film awaits us in

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Saengjun_An elephant procession, Phang Nga copy

Saengjun Limlohakul/NUS Museum

The Artist-Curator’s Eye: Manit Sriwanichpoom’s “Rediscovering Forgotten Thai Masters of Photography”

By Elaine Chiew (1,600 words, eight-minute read) Art historian Patrick Flores first addressed the phenomenon of the artist-curator in his seminal essay Turns in Tropics [1] as someone who holds a certain power and who has become a key figure in shaping the art history of contemporary Southeast Asian art. Manit Sriwanichpoom’s exhibition Rediscovering Forgotten

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Elaine Chiew

In the Mood of Brian Gothong Tan: Lost Cinema at Institute of Contemporary Arts (via Invisible Flâneuse)

The woman in the cheongsam and upswept hairdo walks into the audience’s line of sight from behind a pillar, carrying a tiffin carrier. She poses, every gesture and expression countenanced to project drama and artifice, and many of her poses are notably contorted, emphasising an arched foot, her thrust out hip. The man enters, dressed in

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Courtesy of STPI – Creative Workshop & Gallery

Dinh Q. Lê’s “Monuments and Memorials”: A Double Haunting

By Elaine Chiew (1,135 words, six-minute read) Spectral and iconic, Dinh Q. Lê’s first major solo exhibition in Singapore premieres his Monuments and Memorials series of works, created as artist-in-residence at STPI – Creative Workshop and Gallery. Born in 1968 in Ha Tien, on the border of Cambodia and Vietnam, Lê fled the Khmer Rouge

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“Ghosts and Spectres”: The Burden of History and Artistic Narration

By Elaine Chiew (1350 words, 10-minute read) The stitching together of alternative histor(ies) within artistic exploration as a kind of “false radical chic”, to borrow Singaporean artist Ho Tzu Nyen’s term[1], can cloud the tougher question of where lies the artist’s burden of truth when playing with history. The four artists showcased in Ghosts and

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SIFA’s “Trojan Women”: An Allegory for Modern Times

By Elaine Chiew (1116 words, 10-minute read) Euripides’ play Trojan Women has been adapted and performed numerous times around the world, from a version written by Jean Paul Sartre to American playwright Charles Mee’s 2003 adaptation that included Holocaust and Hiroshima testimonials. [1] This time, it has been given a Korean pansori makeover by SIFA

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Emergent Materialities and Intertextuality: The NAFA Graduate Showcase 2017

By Elaine Chiew (1140 words, 12-minute read) Tofu sheets, latex skin, talcum, chocolate powder, milk. A meander through the fine art segment of the NAFA graduate showcase, titled as an ironic play on words, “The Grad Expectations 2017,” reveals two interesting strands: the unconventional materialities emergent in the current exhibition, and the play of intertextuality

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Fieldnotes from The LASALLE Show Exhibition 2017

By Elaine Chiew (970 words, 9-minute read) The biggest show of the year for Lasalle College of the Arts opened on the evening of the 18th with fanfare: speeches, tinsel, music, a buffet of food, tons of people. The variety of works on show is dizzying — a cornucopia of over 800 works from the

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The Curatorial Complex: A Roundtable on the Singapore Biennale

Seng Yu Jin: Our roundtable comprises students from the MA in Asian Art Histories programme at LASALLE College of the Arts, and we are looking at the Singapore Biennale 2016 – An Atlas of Mirrors, henceforth SB2016, as a case study of the “curatorial complex”. If I may start with a summary of ideas about

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Singapore Biennale 2016: The Myth, the Mirror and the Map

By Elaine Chiew, Finalist, Best Essay by an Emerging Art Writer Competition (2996 words, 30-minute read) Much of our ideas about maps today are reduced to their function: their ability to tell us where we are and how to get somewhere. However, maps as art inquire what a map is rather than what it does.

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