KVT – Biennaling in Singapore

The 2013 Singapore Biennale (which concludes on Feb 16) has as its theme: IF THE WORLD CHANGED. KVT has given himself four days to wallow in the ifs and buts put forward by some of the region’s, and some of the world’s best, up and coming artists, and also to enjoy Singapore’s diverse food culture.

DAY ONE …..AT THE SINGAPORE ART MUSEUM (SAM)

There’s too much to see and be engrossed in to make these travel diaries anything but surface observations of the art works on show. So here goes………..

The most amazing and involving art work I saw today was an interactive diorama by Japanese art collective, Team Lab. It’s called ‘Peace Can Be Realized Even Without Order’ and uses holograms and mirrors and all sorts of technical and simple stuff that our own video artist Nguyen Trinh Thi (who is also a featured artist at the Biennale but exhibited at National Museum of Singapore) would be able to do just as amazing things with if she could get her hands on it. The use of mirrors to produce the effect of infinity would even make the master of stage illusion, Robert Le Page, nod his head in agreed amazement.

It was the most amazing piece to stay with but also the most amazingly hardest piece to find on the top floor of the Museum.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kb02Rj1V9qU[/youtube]

Phi Phi Oanh ‘s enormous lacquer work ‘Specula’, first spectacularly displayed in Hanoi in 2009 has been brilliantly curated and installed inside the chapel (SAM used to be a Catholic boys’ school) and, for me, now has a great Renaissance feel to it. You approach it with the reverence it deserves and I came away with the same amazement that in felt in winter 2009.

It’s the second biennale that ‘Specula’ has splendidly arched in.

From here on I’ll concentrate on the four Vietnamese works in SAM (There are 38 installations altogether from all over South East Asia) and I’ll intersperse them with images of many of the other works …for which I’ll usually country of origin rather than artists’ names in this text. Quality of images is due to my stupidity with cameras.

Nguyen Tran Nam has his work ‘We Never Fell’ gracing the square of lawn at SAM’s entrance and the five, almost life size, composite skittle like figures of Vietnamese people…farmers and urban workers …are all about the adaptability of humans to change and displacement. Viewers are able to interact with the characters that bounce back even when pushed to extreme limits. An excellent inclusion in an international art event!

Nam’s composite figures are sort of echoed by the wooden ones in a very thought provoking, class room installation from Myanmar, ‘The Sick Classroom’ which is about the concept of regulated thought and behavior…a concept that governments throughout the world attempt to impose…often drastically.

Video and sound installations at SAM were excellently thought provoking and I only wish that I could show you the Thai, Super Barbara sex doll saving the world -or at least Thailand.

The scenario for the incredibly beautiful Indonesian video, ‘Black River’ could be transferred to a host of despoiled Vietnamese urban steams that run black and putrid…take the To Lich in Hanoi for one!

The Philipino video and sculptural installation referring to a rural massacre in 2009 is transferable to too many locations throughout the modern world

In fact the works by Philippino artists were about the most powerful on display as they grappled with issues of exploitation, colonialism and Catholicism

And a very intense room of installations by an art project looked at changes wrought by progress to communities along a Cordilleran highway with one about the salt trail here:

The doll heads collected by urchins from a Philipino city garbage dump and displayed in grisly format on the ends of wavy sticks was almost too powerful to contemplate…and even unnerved some gallery staff

In one of the courtyards it’s a delight to come across Vu Hong Ninh’s ‘Little Soap Boy’ which impishly references Mannekin Pis in Brussels, Buddhist iconography, and as it is displayed under it’s canopy, could be a naughty little putti or cherub from Michelangelo’s ‘Creation Of Adam’. Already the rebellious child is being worn away as viewers wash thei hands with his body, and water from a nearby basin that recalls Boticelli’s ‘Venus’.

Superb work!

And beautifully balancing the cheeky imp are the photographs on tiles from Thailand, installed in the four wall arch recesses in an adjoining courtyard.

The before and after paintings from Borneo about the destruction of habitats and environment have world wide significance, though it’s amazing in real life situations, how many people prefer the imposed landscape to the natural. In north Vietnam, for example, the jungle clad hills south of started to be cleared five years ago and now the terraced rice fields are aglow and golden at harvest time and fragile slopes are green with waving green corn. The once jade rivers and streams now flow deliciously chocolaty.

It’s not devastation unique to developing countries. In Australia, as a contrast in wealth status, huge landscapes have become saline due to recent land clearance and many Australian rivers are too salty for irrigation.

Land clearance and its effect on ethnic people is explored in 2D paintings from Malaysia

Tran Tuan’s ‘Forefingers’ , large sculptural furniture pieces clothed in exotic materials such as carved animal bone, cow hide, and crocodile leather were featured in SAM”S foyer and were made use of by some patrons lining up to buy entry tickets. The four forefingers represent the trigger fingers of anti war activists in the American War but is a sacrifice unheeded by today’s young. The fingers’ coverings perhaps draw attention to those who profiteered from the war without fighting, or those whose families were so rich and powerful that they could save their sons’ skins and rake in a bundle in the aftermath.

And to conclude some more images of installations simple and profound. It was a day of discovery that blew my mind. Unfortunately some images were too blurred to use or my simple little camera couldn’t take adequate pictures in darker places.

An Indonesian media collective gave us a beauty with a message

Two Indonesian artists used hand made Shaw puppets as focal points as seen here in test tubes

And those painstakingly carved by another, some as big as a grain of sand, gave us an insight into the macro and micro cosmos (the last image from a PR poster to show the intricacy of the work)

And in the same gallery, bouncing off the Lilliputians were four meditative and poetic pieces in polystyrene that illustrates the pulsars emitted by a collapsed star (Terra Sensa-lovel)

And some more I really enjoyed….one from Thailand which recycled furniture

And a crimson glow from saga seeds from Malaysia

Laos was represented with gender issues in glorious color

And by photos of actual environmental sculptures that decry the management of South East Asian Rivers

While the diamonds made of hard sugar spoke eloquently about forced labor in Thailand

Enough already…tomorrow it’s off to SAM @Q8 for another session of good art viewing…and if it’s only half as good as day one, I’ll be piddling my pants in warm contentedness (figuratively speaking!)