Figuring a Scene | In Dialogue with Patrick Flores and Siddharta Perez

Curated by Dr. Patrick Flores, the exhibition “Figuring a Scene” proposes that exhibitions hold intrinsic significance beyond historical or societal contexts. Emotions, imagination, and sensory experiences take centre stage in our understanding of art, defining how we make sense of the world around us.

This conversation between Dr. Flores and Siddharta Perez will delve into debates around exhibition-making and the tension between “making” and “making sense.”

Siddharta Perez is Curatorial Lead at the National University of Singapore Museum, where she also oversees its South and Southeast Asia collections and contemporary projects. Additionally, Perez helms the ‘prep-room’, a unique curatorial model that articulates the relationships among artefacts, artworks and archives, as well as the interactions between artists’ practices and pedagogical disciplines. Perez is from the Philippines, which is also where her work with university museums, galleries, artists and independent projects made an impact in the regional scene. She co-founded the exhibition, residency and news platform Planting Rice in 2011 and is currently part of the editorial collective Southeast of Now.

Patrick Flores is Deputy Director of Curatorial & Research at National Gallery Singapore. He was previously Professor of Art History and Criticism at the Department of Art Studies, University of the Philippines, Quezon City, which he chaired from 1997 to 2003. He was also concurrently the curator of the Jorge B. Vargas Museum. In 2015, he curated the Philippine Pavilion at the 56th Venice Biennale. In 2022, he was curator of the Taiwan Pavilion at the Venice Biennale.

“Figuring a Scene” moves away from how art history has defined the logic of exhibitions, arguing that exhibitions have intrinsic significance independent of supposedly external factors like history or society. It asserts that emotions, imagination, and sensory experiences play crucial roles in understanding art and inevitably defining how we make sense of history or society. The exhibition probes the process of creating forms and how sensitive materials like art gain significance within specific settings, resembling the unfolding of narrative or drama.

“Figuring a Scene” presents different instances where elements from nature become signs that help us perceive and grasp social forms. These instances come via the shadow, the fruit, the fire, the air, the wax, and the city.