18 Dec 2018

Exhibitions at Institute of Contemporary Arts Singapore

Dissolving margins

Artists: Eng Kai Er, Camille Henrot, James T Hong, Tara Kelton, Darius Ou

Curator: Melanie Pocock

Exhibition runs until 22 January 2019

Dissolving margins is inspired by scenes from Elena Ferrante’s bestselling novel My brilliant friend (2012). One of the novel’s protagonists, Raffaella ‘Lila’ Cerullo, experiences multiple episodes of ‘dissolving margins’: psychosomatic events in which her mind and body fuse with her surroundings. In these moments of flux, Lila questions the moral integrity of her family and friends, whose violent character she sees as if for the first time.

In the exhibition, striking, large-scale installations, experimental performance and prints by five international and Singaporean artists bridge physical and virtual worlds, immersing the viewer in experiences of dissolving margins.

Office of unreplied emails (2016–17) by Camille Henrot, exhibited first at the Berlin Biennale in 2016 and the following year at the Palais de Tokyo, presents oversized prints of hundreds of spam emails received by Henrot along with her proposed responses. Draped over wooden poles and strewn across the floor of the gallery, the numerous texts create an intriguing spectacle of emphatic requests and replies.

Tara Kelton’s Still life with a curtain (2015) takes as its starting point an image of Paul Cezanne’s masterpiece of the same name. Descriptions of Cezanne’s painting produced by online workers appear alongside visual simulations of the workers’ texts created by 3D visualisation studios in Bangalore, India’s ‘silicon plateau’.

Award-winning Singaporean graphic designer Darius Ou’s project Autotypography (2012–13) features 365 posters designed daily over the course of a year. Ou’s posters—displayed in their entirety for the first time—transform four gallery walls into an enormous clashing wallpaper of colours, texts, images and digital animations.

In the darkest area of the gallery, visitors encounter filmmaker James T Hong’s video installation, Nietzsche reincarnated as a Chinese woman and their shared lives (2016–18). Envisaged as a four-channel ‘chamber’, Hong’s work encloses viewers in an epic clash between Eastern and Western social morals, where scenes of multiplying cells, writhing insects and butchered animals embody contemporary herd mentalities.

A new work by Singaporean dancer and choreographer Eng Kai Er has been developed for the exhibition. In her performance, Compressible sentiments (2018), Eng takes the inflatable Jurassic World T-Rex costume—a famous Internet meme—and turns its virtual identity into a projection of human anxieties.

Dissolving margins is supported by the Cultural Matching Fund. Camille Henrot’s work is supported by the Institut Francais, NPE Print Communications and KÖNIG GALERIE, Berlin. Darius Ou’s work is supported by HP.

Moving pledges: Art and action in Southeast Asia

Artists: FX Harsono, Mella Jaarsma, Bui Cong Khanh, Koh Nguang How, Justin Loke and Yang Jie, Manit Sriwanichpoom, Restu Ratnaningtyas, Ikoy Ricio, Jakkai Siributr, Sutee Kunavichayanont, Truong Tan, Tay Wei Leng, Josephine Turalba

Guest curator: Iola Lenzi

Exhibition runs until 23 January 2019

Moving pledges presents diverse works by 14 Southeast Asian artists who use art as a means to probe social and political power structures. The exhibition comprises participatory and performance art, photography, video, sculpture and installation. Audience members are invited to experience unusual sensory encounters with works of art by trying on garments, making rubbings and documenting their responses for public display.

Produced between 1977 and 2018, the exhibited works employ aesthetics, materials and audience interaction to prompt discussion about the systems of authority that regulate daily life. They reference Southeast Asian political histories, social contradictions and ethnic customs. Jakkai Siributr’s Changing room (2017) invites audiences to try on military jackets embroidered with images of violence experienced by Muslims in Thailand’s deep south. Josephine Turalba’s Scandals (2013–), a series of hand-stitched slippers made of spent bullet cartridges, are aesthetically seductive but painful to wear. FX Harsono presents moulds, casts and documentation of previous presentations of his pistol-shaped rice cracker installation—one of the region’s earliest participatory artworks. Manit Sriwanichpoom’s Horror in pink (2001) photographs contrast an individual’s desire for immediate consumer gratification with images of tragic events in Thailand’s recent history that he believes are too easily forgotten.

Moving pledges includes major works by Manit Sriwanichpoom and Ikoy Ricio that were acquired in the early 2000s for the LASALLE College of the Arts Collection. The exhibition has been developed in parallel with the LASALLE conference Art and Action: Contemporary Art and Discourse in Southeast Asia, organised by the MA Asian Art Histories programme and presented from 3 to 5 December this year.

Moving pledges: Art and action in Southeast Asia is supported by the Cultural Matching Fund.