A Response to ‘Every Thought I’ve Ever Had: Contemplating the Origin of the Sun’
Veteran playwright Leow Puay Tin is intrigued by the methods used by a trio of young performance makers to sustain a 12-hour performance.
Visual Arts
Careening Into “The Milk of Dreams”: Southeast Asia at the 59th Venice Biennale
While the stated theme of the Biennale is to challenge the hegemony of the West, Nicole Wong finds that the spaces created for these interventions to happen struggles against the behemoth of the Biennale itself.
Tan Boon Hui: A Cultural Leader Of Grace And Courage
The Executive Director of Singapore’s Arts House Limited’s untimely death last week reverberated through the international art world. His colleagues pay tribute to his vision, leadership and friendship.
Ilham Art Show 2022: An Introspection Into What Was
From technological frustrations to climate catastrophes to queer representation, the Ilham Art Show has it all. Mira Sharon untangles the pieces which prize on the themes of family, love and loss.
Being and Becoming: Of Femininities in the Malay World Through 50 Images (Seminars)
A series of four seminars was presented by researchers behind Being and Becoming: Of Femininities in the Malay World Through 50 Images.
Being and Becoming: Of Femininities in the Malay World Through 50 Images
This May, we are pleased to announce the launch of an online exhibition – Being and Becoming: Of Femininities in the Malay World Through 50 Images. This exhibition is part of a research project, Being and Becoming Female in the Malay World: Interrogating and Curating the Photo-Archives of Early Singapore, supported by the National Heritage …
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Dalam Southeast Asia: At Home in the World
Alex Foo reviews the exhibition The Tailors and the Mannequins, featuring works by Singaporean artist Chen Cheng Mei and Cambodian artist You Khin. The exhibition is part of Dalam Southeast Asia, National Gallery Singapore’s new space that presents perspectives from territorial Southeast Asia, aiming to spotlight lesser-known narratives in the region. Midway through the journey …
Spectres of May 13, 1969
Eddie Wong writes of the various spectres around the riots of May 13 1969 that continue to haunt the Malaysian psyche till today. He conjures up new ways of thinking of ghosts and their connections with the living, and pays tribute to those who continue to contribute to the much-needed conversation around this topic. This …
Disability Arts: Critical Conversations between South Korea and Singapore
Disability Arts: Critical Conversations between South Korea and Singapore Presented by ArtsEquator, Equal Dreams and Taeyoon Choi Studio Disability Arts has emerged as a powerful and dynamic area of practice within the wider arts and cultural landscape regionally in recent years. Yet, the work of rethinking and rebuilding disability-centred arts ecosystems is an ongoing process …
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5 Artists Who Influenced Contemporary Southeast Asian Art
These pioneers and rule breakers will change the way you view the regional arts scene. Throughout history and up to the present day, it has been a challenge to define contemporary Southeast Asian art. One such roadblock comes in the form of a lack of proper archives and documentation. Another issue is that Southeast Asia’s …
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Singapore Art Week 2022: Returning to form, not FOMO
The Singapore Art Week (SAW) officially runs from 14th to 23rd January 2022. With over 130 physical and online events running across the island, it is a mammoth task to cover all the offerings available. Nevertheless, here are four shows – big and indie – that caught my eye. Hawker! Hawker! 13 collaborators from Singapore, …
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Capturing The Imagination: Art Installations at The Arts House
Text and Photos by Grace Baey Amidst the line-up of events at Singapore Art Week 2022, The Arts House is currently a site for three new installation works by artists Speak Cryptic, Jason Wee and WY-TO, and the National Library Board. We spoke with the artists and organisers to learn more about their works, beyond …
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The Swimming Pool Library Exhibition: Mind The Gap?
By Daniel Teo (1,018 words, 4-minute read) When the tour party assembles for Brian Gothong Tan’s The Swimming Pool Library exhibition, I realise I am likely the oldest person in the group. Our tour leader, Elijah Tay (pronouns “they”/“them”), introduces themselves and announces they had just turned 20. Just great, my mid-30s self thought. When …
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The top ArtsEquator articles of 2021
Below is a list of the top 10 ArtsEquator articles in 2021, in random order: The Substation: How many more canaries in the coal mine? by Hoe Su Fern Published on: 20 Feb 2021 “Although the current situation facing The Substation is not new or unique, its impending fate is emblematic of, and raises …
2021: Singapore Visual Arts at Year’s End
Let’s face it, 2021 in Singapore sucked harder than 2020. The waves of mildly inconvenient restrictions did more to chip away at everyone’s mental health than 2020’s “shut-everything-down” Circuit Breaker. Amidst the litany of changes to safe-distancing regulations though, the museums and galleries have remained open. Here’s my rundown of the highlights of Singapore’s museums, …
Phuong M. Do: The Puzzle of Photography, or What Fits and What Does Not
This article is published as part of the inaugural AE x Goethe-Institut Critical Writing Micro-Residency 2021/2022. Last year, I embarked on a two-month research that sought to sketch a possible genealogy of “Vietnamese contemporary art” that foregrounds female art practitioners. Spanning two print issues of a magazine, roughly twenty-one pages, the final essay celebrates more …
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ANCER Lab 03 Manila: How arts managers are surviving COVID-19
By Wennie Yang (1,200 words, 4-minute read) Pandemic restrictions have put arts and cultural workers and institutions in a bind: choosing between sustaining their missions at times of a global pandemic or ceasing operations altogether. How have Southeast Asian arts managers survived? That was the question at the heart of the third ANCER Lab, formed …
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So You Wanna Be An Independent Art Curator in Singapore?
By Syed Muhammad Hafiz (1,000 words, 3-minute read) For the uninitiated, art curators are a mysterious bunch. Even scary, sometimes. Usually associated with big, stuffy museums, they speak a particular language that only they would recognise, and write essays that would require you to have a dictionary on hand. Fortunately, most of those stereotypes are …
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Yale-NUS closure: Artistic legacies and loss in (de)liberation
In August, the National University of Singapore (NUS) announced unilaterally that Yale-NUS College would be shut down by 2025, marking what many see as a premature end to the partnership between Yale University and NUS that started in 2011. The months since have seen an outpouring of grief, anger, and resistance against the decision to …
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Performance Making during a Pandemic: Of Innovation, Form and Embeddedness
By Adriana Nordin Manan (1,000 words, 3-minute read) If arts panel discussions are meant to reflect the times, “Critical Responses to Performance-Making in A Post-Pandemic World” positioned itself well: at this stage of the pandemic, it was less about open-ended contemplation of how the performing arts can retain vitality amidst the prohibitive circumstances, and more …
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The working processes of artists: Sonia Kwek
“Probably your body is the one space you can be the most autonomous still”, says artist and performer Sonia Kwek. In this video, the artist talks about the politics of using the female body in her works, and how this relates to the experiences of marginalised communities. She also shares about her recent work Red …
BIPAM 2021: Delight, despair, dialogue and the despot
By Nabilah Said (1,800 words, 6-minute read) I’ve never actually attended the Bangkok International Performing Arts Meeting (BIPAM). This year, the pandemic allowed me to, as BIPAM offered a five-day digital programme full of showcases, talks and other activities. It brought me, a Singaporean, a world of imagination – colourful and joyous in parts, provoking …
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Dialogues with Mountains: Preserving indigenous culture in Taromak and Kelecung
By Wennie Yang (1,400 words, 6-minute read) Let’s face it. Leisure travel feels like a distant memory at the moment. I’ve been trying to envision what a collective future means for destination hotspots in Southeast Asia, whose economies used to be propelled by foreign tourism. These thoughts were further spurred after attending a one-day online …
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Can the arts solve community issues in the region? The SEA*5 think so.
Can the creative society in Southeast Asia support each other in finding solutions to problems in our communities, powered by compassion and empathy? That’s one of the questions at the heart of the existence of Project SEA*5. The group comprises five creative practitioners working across different local community contexts: community architect-urbanist Joanne Mun advocates for …
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The Body Witness: Gardens Speak, en route, As Far As Isolation Goes at SIFA 2021
By Vithya Subramaniam (1,600 words, 6-minute read) Though cancelled last year amid the developing pandemic, Singapore International Festival of Arts has done well to lean into the possibilities of small-group, distanced programmes for this year’s line-up. I attended three of its immersive experiences—Gardens Speak, As Far As Isolation Goes, and en route—and found my body …
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Master Conversations: Multimedia Design with Shimpei Yamada and Bilqis Hijjas
Japanese video designer Shimpei Yamada shares about his practice in multimedia and video design and installation, for both theatre and dance, alongside KL-based critic-facilitator Bilqis Hijjas. This session took place on 8 June 2021 as part of the Asian Arts Media Roundtable at SIFA 2021. The inaugural Master Conversations series focuses on production and technical …
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ArtsEquator’s Hot List: May 2021
Every first Wednesday of the month, ArtsEquator releases our editor’s picks of shows/events/programmes that our readers can look out for in that month. Note: The events below are subject to changing conditions due to COVID-19. Do check with the respective presenters. This list in published in no particular order. 1. The Music of Checkpoint …
Cakap-Cakap: Interview with Anaïs López for The Migrant
In this month’s Cakap-Cakap (chit-chat), ArtsEquator speaks with visual artist Anaïs López about her multimedia exhibition The Migrant which is currently showing at the Chapel Gallery, Objectifs. Through audio, video, text and photography, López discusses migration, urbanisation and human-animal relationships through the character of the ubiquitous Javan mynah and its evolving place in Southeast Asia, …
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#WhatsHappeningInMyanmar – and how you can help
In the early hours of Monday, 1 February 2021, the leaders of Myanmar’s elected civilian government were seized and detained in a military coup d’état. Over the past 81 days, the Burmese Armed Forces (also known as the Tatmadaw တပ်မတော်) have installed themselves as an illegitimate regime in Myanmar, declared a state of emergency in …
Artistic intervention: An orange truck lands in… Yishun?
As a resident of Yishun, I do not usually expect any sort of art exhibition to come to my town. As a town notorious for cat killing and the occasional murder, you wouldn’t expect any cultural experience to rank high on the list of places to go in Yishun, which was why I was pleasantly …
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