KVT – Biennale Ngày thứ 4 tại Peranakam và…

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I was at SAM to get another look at Malaysian, Ahmad Abu Bakar’s wooden fishing boat filled with plastic bottles

It’s called TELAK BLANGAH and the boat is stamped with phrases that address questions of land, identity and faith. Instead of a catch of fish it carries a catch of bottles seemingly scooped from the ocean and filled with the written hopes and aspirations, upon release, of a group of male prisoners in notorious Changi Prison. The title also refers to the neckline pattern of traditional male Malay attire. Poor Malay and Indians apparently make up a hugely disproportionate amount of incarcerated Singaporeans. The bottles are a poignant reminder that Changi is primarily considered to be a place for castaways and the flotsam and jetsam of society

A parallel exhibition at the Peranakan Museum concerns female prisoners in Changi Prison. It’s by Singaporean artist, Shirley Soh in collaboration with several inmates and, addresses, using embroidery, their dreams about release and their depressions, angst and about the ways in which their known worlds will have changed during their lengthy imprisonments. It’s titled SEEING (FROM) THE OTHERS.

The paucity and simplicity of the women’s work is made more emotive for the viewer when it is contrasted to the intricate embroidered and beaded objects that represent old family adornments of the Peranakans (the original Chinese immigrants to Singapore island centuries ago. The irony is compounded when you realize that Soh’s female collaborators are mainly rural Malay and Indian whom the Perakans would have used as indentured or low paid labor and also when you realize that the Museum’s ethos is to display work that was crafted or accumulated by, usually, wealthy women.

A Biennale Artists In-Schools’ Program conducted by Singaporean Hazel Lim in five secondary schools over 6 months is startlingly good.

The selected students documented flora and fauna in 5 diverse areas

They then painted images on white china plates and dishes in deep blue enamel paint. The project’s aim was to illuminate and preserve impressions of nature that may be destroyed or displaced by urban development…..the old fashioned presentation of plates is because Lim believes that the natural landscape amidst the rich lushness of the museum’s collection.

I’ve been a sucker for neon lighting if used well in art installations ever since I discovered Mario Merz. A Thai artist, Ungkavatanapong, has collected objects that reflect the museum’s former use as the Tao Nan School. The resultant, site specific sculpture that soars up through the grand stairwell is quite spectacular. Ungkavatanapong’s interest as an artist is to deconstruct objects of their known functions and appropriate them new allusions and symbols. Its titled I HAVE SEEN A SWEETER SKY.

A particularly engrossing exhibition was by Singaporean, Robert Zhao Renhui who looked at how the human species has emerged as the single main perpetrator of the various pressures that threaten the survival of other planetary life forms. A GUIDE TO THE FLORA AND FAUNA OF THE WORLD attempts to document ways in which we alter the planet. Three large photographs illustrate how a group of elephants is gradually mutating into a tusk less variety as result of ivory poaching…though a too low number of male herd members is driving them nearer to extinction. Another shows the increase of a threatened fish eating raptor species due to the introduction for human food of a large fish species into rivers…though the introduced fish have wiped out natural fish species. The last shows an endangered ape species that has learned to mimic-or use- human sounds in a probable attempt to survive amidst a dominant predator race.

The artist also documents through 2D and 3D format foodstuffs and animals that man has changed using genetic, physically forced, or artificially reproduced formats. 34 examples are used that range from deliberate, centuries old breeding programs, to modern gene splicing, to fruit forced to grow in unusual shapes, to food that is factory produced: eggs, grapes and steak.

Thai artist, Dusadee Huntrakul was commissioned by the Biennale to produce a very intricate and laborious series of hand written graphite texts that exactly copy parts of a book by an anthropologist that studies the Cambodian migrations westwards due to ruptures within that country, These include periods of Buddhist absolutism and the Pol Pot led period of genocidal atrocities. It’s titled TRACING AIWAH ONG’S ‘BUDDHA IS HIDING’ and is an ongoing part of the artist’s interest in the results of cross culture migration.

I found it hard to suppress loud gasps of WOW as I progressed around the four walls.

In the lushly treed gardens of the National Museum are two interesting works.

One is by Indonesian Eko Prawoto who constructed 3 tall, interconnected bamboo cones that viewers can walk through and sit in and contemplate the smell of curing bamboo and the progression of the clouds through the vents at the top, inviting viewers to regress to a time when they had the freedom from the clutches of immediate sound connection to enjoy the slow sensory progress of nature.

The artist uses the cones, that represent the shape of mountain ranges in his homeland and he calls it WORMHOLE because the passages inside refer to earthworm tunnels and also to because he wants to connect with the Indonesian folklore belief that the mountain is the axis between the earth and the heavens (of which he gives us passing glimpses as long as we take the time to sit and contemplate and lazily gaze upwards)

Nowadays a biennale doesn’t seem to be complete without a re-assembling of a famous artist’s work space. This time the studio space is that of self taught Indonesian artist, Rosid, who uses a small wooden hut used by farmers to store rice. He calls it his LUMBUNG ILMU (GRANARY OF KNOWLEDGE)

The interior and exterior of the building contain objects both personal and cultural that emphasize cultural values and traditions that are disappearing… The artist wants others to share in these values that belong to a world now irreversibly changed.

It’s another contemplative space to wander both outside and to sit inside.

I really liked the portrait woven out of raffia string by Singaporean Guo Yixiu who has a habit of has made a series of these on railings and fences throughout the city’s civic area. The subjects of the portraits are habitués of the area. This one is called PARANOIA

The foyer of the National Museum is worth a few stops to see the installation by famous and very exciting Australian based Singaporean, Suzann Victor who has a permanent installation of swinging chandeliers in another area of the museum

Her installation requires a lot of solar equipment outside the museum

The artist’s RAINBOW CIRCLE is an everchanging vision of spectrum colour using reflected light on an interior waterfall and she wishes to draw attention to the fragility of nature as well as the futlity of chasing rainbows to gain happiness and wealth.

Victor also wants the viewer to ‘reflect on the wider discourse on environmental sustainability by envouraging them to imagine a future where a rainbow could become so rare that it can only be seen as a precious relic housed inside a museum’….as has become the fate of too much of the earth’s natural phenomena.

Thus ends my recording of my perambulations at the 2013 Biennale…and if my camera hadn’t run out of battery charge I’d have spent more textual time on some of the other very interesting and immersive exhibits
Now its back to Hanoi, the lead up to Tet and the annual drizzle of mua xuan.