Selected Producing Work
While She Quivers
with Yanyun Chen and Kanchana Gupta
Chapel Gallery, Objectifs Centre for Photography and Film, 10 Feb – 13 Mar 2022
[Creative Producer]
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While She Quivers bridges the converging practices of visual artists Kanchana Gupta and Yanyun Chen, interrogating the socially and culturally defined frameworks of femininity in a quiet provocation of desire, power, intimacy, and personal agency. The exhibition presents rich and embodied extensions of their long-term explorations – Kanchana’s Production of Desire and Yanyun’s Stories of a woman and her dowry. Both works navigate the precarities of the cultural tropes and expectations of Asian women, in a palpable reclamation of tenderness and strength embedded in the feminine narrative and identity.
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Quivering, as a gesture, denotes a restlessness, tension, and uncertainty that is also fuelled by emotive power and potency. It requires vulnerability in strength, resists subjugation, and demands a bold incitement of power. Kanchana and Yanyun’s incisive installations transform the Objectifs Chapel Gallery into a space that is visceral and contemplative; employing symbolic gestures, rituals and objects in ways that are equally autonarrative and somatic to unpack the underlying performativity of being a woman.
Living Legacies:
One for the Road (2023), Of Roots and Leaves (2022), Living Legacies: In Sickness and In Health (2021)
National Heritage Board / Plural Art Mag
[Researcher, Writer, Artist Liaison]
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Living Legacies is a project that explores the intersection between Singapore’s history, heritage and contemporary visual arts, as part of the Singapore HeritageFest.
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The inaugural edition of Living Legacies: In Sickness and In Health, turned the focus onto health, wellness and traditional healing practices. Three contemporary artists presented newly commissioned digital artworks. Adeline Kueh’s Roadside Beauties and other tales of healing explores homemade herbal remedies shared amongst family and friends, that boost immunity, relieve “heatiness” and cleanse the body. Drawing from modern wellness and image culture, Divaagar’s soft salves follows fictional influencer and model Vita, who shares her encounters with Ayurveda and undergoes a journey of learning about holistic wellness. ila explores the practice of dispelling or expelling ‘wind’ (or angin) from the body and mediates our personal and collective relationships with wind.
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The second edition of Living Legacies: Of Roots and Leaves focused on our natural heritage. Three selected artists took audiences on a journey to discover both the historical and the contemporary significance of the country’s natural heritage. Alysha Rahmat Shah’s work tumbuhan penyembuhan responds to the colonial tradition of illustrating plants and seeks to counter the perception that the discovery of local plants and their various uses originated in colonial times. Knowledge of such plants and their utility, in fact, pre-dates colonialism and has always been central to indigenous wisdom. Isabelle Desjeux’s work Did Ali See What Wallace Saw? interrogates the role of botanical gardens in containing and controlling nature in order to exploit plants deemed important. Shubigi Rao’s video work, Waysides, speaks to the deep sense of loss as a result of our disconnect from the natural world. Examining tropical tropes and representations of nature, she unravels contemporary desires that reflect human-centric interpretations of the natural world.
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The third edition focused on Singapore's public transport heritage. Spanning photography, paintings, and performances as well as tours, workshops and talks, these experiences will provide various touchpoints for audience engagement and participation, both digitally and in person. Lavender Chang’s “Floating Rays of a Wanderer” traces the journeys of strangers, attempting to sense their destinations, and mapping their travels on public transport – each image a unique record of a bus ride and a document of Singapore’s ever-changing landscape. Yeo Tze Yang’s “One Day, I Hope I Don’t Need To Take The MRT Anymore – Reflections on public transport and class in Singapore” observes the class dynamics that underlie our perceptions of mobility in the city. In his paintings of everyday commutes, he reflects on the complex, often contradictory experiences of public transport, and questions the underlying biases we hold. Ezzam Rahman’s performance work, “the little differences you made for me” responds to the realities of navigating public transportation in Singapore with disabilities. He turns our attention to how apparently simple everyday activities can turn into chores without adequately inclusive public transportation facilities.
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https://livinglegacies.pluralartmag.com/
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Feelers, Potato Productions
[Documentation Lead] (Apr – Dec 2021) / [Member of Collective] (Present)
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Feelers is an art and technology studio. We initiate and nurture cross-pollination between arts and technology through projects which increase accessibility, deepen engagement and foreground the value of the art-making process.
Labs is a pilot programme for projects that trace unusual and innovative lines between art and technology. For 2021-22, we focused on integrating performance and technology, with an emphasis on how liveness and audience experience can be remapped across digital, virtual and physical space.
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