SINGAPORE BIENNALE 2016

Lucky me. I arrived in Singapore to find their Biennale in the Singapore Art Museum and other Museums and institutions around town. It has been a great introduction to the Southeast Asian geography and culture. Many visits have pulled me out of an extreme state of jet lag and whetted my appetite to learn more about Southeast Asia.

Singapore Biennale

AN ATLAS OF MIRRORS - AT ONCE, MANY WORLDS

"In charting our way around the world, humankind has relied on instruments of vision as well as navigation. Atlases map and mirror our journeys of discovery and often make visible more than just physical terrain; driven by our needs and desires, they embolden us to venture into the unknown.

From our coordinates in Southeast Asia, the arc of our shared histories encompasses East and South Asia.

These regions bear the imprints of one another's diverse cultures, even as boundaries are also constantly reimagined. Fraught and unstable, these borders are characterized by fluid movement and migration which also reflect pre-state national entities, and highlight the challenges that beset contemporary conditions.

Where navigational tools enable us to set our sights further afield, one instrument in particular - the mirror- brings us into that which is still so mysterious: the self. While we depend on mirrors to show us to ourselves, their reflective surfaces are not always reliable for they echo, skew, magnify and invert.

How will a coupling of atlas and mirror shape the way in which we view the world? Through a constellation of artistic perspectives which trace our intertwining relationships, An Atlas of Mirrors positions Southeast Asia as a vantage point from which to picture our world anew."

Here are some of my favorites....

PALA POTHUPITIYE
I love maps. These were delicious. It is really hard to see the intricacy of the images. Pothupitiye is from Sri Lanka (Ceylon.)
The interwoven imagery is delicate and inventive. Stories about colonialism and trade. He morphs the land images into monsters of colonialism.

HEMALI BHUTA

A forest of incense. This cannot be photographed, you must experience it. The smell and the lighting create a deep forest. 

PANNAPHAN YODMANEE

This mural consumed me. I just couldn't leave for a while. So much is going on here. You will get an idea from the link above but here are some close ups.

Gregory Halili

Loved these oil paintings of eyes on mother of pearl. You have to look at the web site (above) to see the intensity of the eyes looking back at you.

The light reflected off the mother of pearl so the photo was unclear but check it out. So very cool.

TITARUBI (click on the name for the web link)

 History repeats itself. Amazing how a small nutmeg can create such havoc. The history of European colonization of Southeast Asia is the story of power. Once European ships could round the Cape of Good Hope in South Africa the future of Southeast Asia would be forever changed. All for the lucrative spice trade, a very profitable business.
This installation is haunting. I almost felt the presence of ghosts who were murdered, starved or worked to death for control of their homes. Not only were the islands captured, the inhabitants intermarried, creating a new Eurasian lineage.
Titarubi impressed the destructive power of colonialism on me. These images are hard to forget.

MADE DJIRNA

Beyond Boundaries.

This room caused a lot of looking. An Art Educators conference was discussing the work. I had a hard time with the accents and really didn't want to share the space with anyone. 

I took some close ups of the figures. What a great introduction to Indonesia.

These were in the Singapore Art Museum. Next post, 8Q across the street.