Essay for La Biennale Di Venezia - 52th International Art Exhibition Singapore Pavilion
by curator Lindy Poh
Figments, Fictions and Fantasies marks the fourth showing of the Singapore Pavilion at the Venice Biennale, since its inaugural national representation in 2001. The Pavilion sited at the historic Palazzo Franchetti Cavalli features the works of four notable Singapore artists – Da Wu Tang (b. 1943), Vincent Leow (b. 1961), Jason Lim (b.1966) and Zulkifle Mahmod (b.1975), who have been invited to develop site-specific works for the pavilion. * * *
Figments, Fictions and Fantasies emerged from the curatorial assessment of the site-specific pieces developed for the pavilion as well as from a critique of the visual devices deployed by these artists in the larger arc of their artistic development. To discern what is at stake is to identify certain problematic characteristics in Singapore art development. One of its defining failings is that it is a visual culture not disciplined by discourse. It is partial towards individual artistic celebrity and exhibits tendencies to celebrate ‘passion’ as a decisive attribute of the iconoclastic artist. In this regard, one of this Pavilion’s curatorial intentions was to probe the limitations of such propensities and to examine practices that inscribe the notion of ‘passion’ with more complexity and nuance. These considerations steered the selection of artists, who have retained their individual expression but who have demonstrated a sense of relation to and with the larger community. Passion, without compassion (a passion for the community, it is contended) - in its feeling for, awareness of, if not responsibility towards the community; or a passion emptied of this dimension, seemed (to this curator at least) to be a characteristic, and a failing, of much of Singapore art-making. The invited four artists share intersecting histories of founding and helming major art collectives in Singapore. Some of these histories have surrendered the most radical episodes and coup de grâce gestures that have shaped the course and complexion of Singapore contemporary art. But more than their involvement with art collectives, their works harbor the potential to harness certain ideals and ideas that offer alternative perspectives, if not alternative paradigms, for the larger polity. This potential is evident in the works for this Pavilion. Under the curatorial rubric of Figments, Fictions and Fantasies, the art works stoke the ideas of Empire, of the Nomadic Traveller, of Migration and Peregrinations, of Hybridity, and finally, at its core, the idea of Freedoms. The artistic and curatorial project of examining the idea of Freedoms as figment, fiction or fantasy has been shaped in no small part by the writings of contemporary cultural theorists, thinkers and writers. A spectrum of devices that include literary and cinematic ones, such as the concept of lo real maravilloso (‘a marvellous reality’) also frame the development of this Pavilion. In the context of Singapore’s art development, the notion of Freedoms assumes the weight and resonance of its own history - tied to the State’s regulations and permits on Performance Art from 1994-2003 and the implications of the liberalising of its policies from then. The presentation of four Performance artists at the Singapore Pavilion this time (including the iconoclastic Da Wu Tang) adds another current of negotiations in the dynamics between the state and independent artists and the expectations from national pavilions.
It is also impossible not to appreciate the subtexts of the artists’ constructions of ‘freedoms’ in relation to the spectacle of current world affairs, in which entire wars and occupations are planned and justified through peddling the idea of defending freedom, democracy and a particular way of life. * * *
Zulkifle Mahmod’s (Zul) sound work, ‘Sonic Dome - An Empire of Thoughts’ evokes a repertoire of ideas and ideologies relating to Empire. These extend beyond the Venetian mythic empire of Exploration and Discovery to much more portentous and contemporary forms of imperialism occurring in present day contexts, in which the sovereignty and governance of nations are at stake. One of a fistful of sound artists in Singapore, Zul considers ‘sound or utterance, a political act’ that can empower through its capacity to mobilize the imagination. His 30-minute composition emitting from a 4m dome, begins innocuously enough and acquires a hypnotic, seductive quality but amplifies and intensifies to a volume that thrusts the listener out of their comfort zone. Continuing his previous concern with new forms of urban migration and the expanding empires of technology, the artist contests the fictions of ‘freedoms’ pledged through increasingly ‘borderless’ interactions and the myths of free speech and the free market. The idea of freedom emerges quite differently in the work by Da Wu TANG, (with Zai TANG), which comprises drawings, photographic and filmic images and sound footage. Tang is often feted as a pioneering performance artist, and founder of the influential The Artists’ Village (TAV), the first significant contemporary art commune in Singapore. One of the most effective Singapore artists in invoking folk and urban myths, Tang conjures up the spectre of the itinerant, Nomadic Traveler/Wanderer. An upright bed, with drawings strapped across its ‘body’ suggests the restlessness and rootless-ness of this imaginary figure. Extracts of sounds, fleeting sensations and visual memories enact the experience of encountering a location through glimpses and partial views. The emancipation of this Wanderer, (freed from shared histories or obligations with residents) is almost always, in contemporary contexts, escorted by the painful, aggrieved shadow of the Wanderer-Exile of a forced diaspora, a displaced figure or refugee fenced into border-lands. The idea of peregrinations (wandering by foot) and of the Wanderer, also surfaces in the 5-room installation by Vincent LEOW, frequently referred to as an enfant terrible of Singapore contemporary art and founder of the alternative art space, Plastique Kinetic Worms (PKW). In the spirit of the fabulous beasts of Venetian fables, Andy’s Wonder Land features the hybrid creatures of a man-bird and the irrepressible figure of the man-dog, based on the artist’s own mongrel Andy. A remarkable imagist and absorbing visual story-teller, Leow is noted for ‘trafficking in images’ - cross-dipping into kitsch, film, literature and pop culture sources to produce images that span sexual, social and cultural politics. A padded asylum room, a glass-house, a wrought-iron fence surrounding a mound of human hair, a stunning throne-seat form the mise-en-scène in each room. Deftly juggling different genres and cross-breeding different aesthetic styles, Leow suggests how Andy counteracts systems of ‘Dogmatism’ and does what writer Rushdie calls the rejoicing in ‘Mongrelisation’, and ‘our mongrel selves’ (through which ‘new-ness enters the world’ – Imaginary Homelands.., 1991). In a radically different tenor, Jason LIM also engages the metaphors of hybridity and migrations. The most conscientiously site-specific pieces in the pavilion, Lim’s works comprise two sculptures that respond to the vintage chandeliers in the Palazzo rooms. A Muslim convert, raised in a Buddhist household and educated in a Catholic mission school, Lim is also a trained ceramicist and a noted performance artist – and often named one of the mavericks of Singapore contemporary art. Not surprisingly, he has a sustained personal and work interest in hybridity – that infamous condition of post-modernity with its suggestions of ‘cross-breeding, impurity and intermingling’.
One of Lim’s pieces, Light Weight, adopts the shape of the ‘shadow of the chandelier’ - its shadowform fashioned from junk and detritus collected over a decade. As with many writers including Walter Benjamin who probe how life histories attach to objects, the artist’s proposition lies in how dreams are lived out in these objects and how over time these junk objects out-live their owner’s dreams. For Lim, these objects (comprising junk, kitsch items, momentoes) are resurrected and redeemed items from the ‘urban nomad’ - a figure at once familiar to city-dwellers accustomed to intra-city migrations and displacements. Lim’s other work, Just Dharma, a chandelier form composed of glowing porcelain Lotus flowers - that emblem of Asian Buddhist cultures - signifies an ‘architectural cluster of prayers’, recalling Buddhist Loy Krathong rituals where lighted lotuses are floated as prayers in the river. His reference to dharma as a philosophy of the Natural Law or Order of Things or a higher truth is further underscored by his planned act that alludes to iconoclasm (the act of smashing of images in certain religions). Lim’s work is slated to be dropped and ‘smashed’ at the launch of the Pavilion. The work offers Lim the opportunity to address how ‘hope’ is a construct and fiction that conventionally counteracts despair and promises freedom and empowerment but paradoxically captures and enslaves because of the frailties of human nature. Not rooted in reason nor intuition, it is hope that sustains and ruins – as evident in the fierce mental and emotional strivings of a parent of a long-missing child; the punter who places yet another bet; the foreign-worker anticipating a better life; the soldier conscripted to fight in an ‘international coalition against terror’ against an enemy he scarcely understands. The Singapore Pavilion artists never quite suggest the absolute removal of restrictions for liberation to occur – perhaps subscribing to the maxim that a world without prohibitions is at best corrupt and at worst, boring. Their works register a sense of fragmentation and the ‘aesthetics of estrangement’ in which different realities collide and interface. The works also offer some persuasive perspectives on ‘freedoms’ that resist easy summary, and their propositions are particularly resonant in a time where fundamental freedoms are still being traded, compromised and breached.
Lindy POH is a professional curator, writer and lawyer specializing in intellectual property, entertainment and media law. She is an advocate and solicitor and legal partner in a Singapore-USA law firm, Balkenende Chew & Chia, (in association with Samuel Seow Law Corporation) with a background in Construction Law and Intellectual Property. In the legal field, she works primarily with architects, artists, developers, writers, entertainers, playwrights, filmmakers, publishers, agents and photographers. She is a founder of Silver Rue, a Singapore-based art consultancy (Reg in 1998) that provides visual culture consultancy. Formerly a curator at the Singapore Art Museum (1996-2000), she curates, produces and manages projects in the visual arts, culture and heritage for local and overseas exhibitions and events, including Hong Kong, Japan, and Italy. Her special interests include photography, film, printmaking, Southeast Asian art, contemporary art and art education.