This post-screening dialogue between Singapore video artist Ho Tzu Nyen and "See Me, See You" exhibition curator Clarissa Chikiamco took place on 14 October 2023 at National Gallery Singapore. It was part of the "See Me, See You" moving image programme, which presented a selection of single channel works by Southeast Asian artists that reveal the workings and effects of the television apparatus, specifically, the ways in which it has blurred the distinction between subject and object, the viewer and the viewed.
On 14 Oct, the programme drew attention to the role of video and television in the formation of a culture of passive spectatorship in the broader society, as well as its potential to bring about a shift. The work screened was "4x4 - Episodes of Singapore Art" (2005) by Ho Tzu Nyen, an artistic intervention that employs the television apparatus to address the lack of critical engagement with the visual arts in Singapore. More information about the work can be found here: tinyurl.com/smsyfilmdayone
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About the speakers
Ho Tzu Nyen (b. 1976, Singapore) is an established artist whose works are steeped in numerous Eastern and Western cultural references ranging from art history to theatre, and from cinema to music to philosophy, blending mythical narratives and historical facts to mobilise different understandings of history, its writing and its transmission. The central theme of his œuvre is a long-term investigation of the plurality of cultural identities in Southeast Asia, a region so diverse that it is impossible to reduce it to a simple geographical area or fundamental historical base. This observation is reflected in his pieces which weave together different regimes of knowledge, narratives and representations. From documentary research to fantasy, his work combines archival images, animation and film in installations that are often immersive and theatrical. One-person exhibitions of his work have been held at the Hammer Museum (2022), Toyota Municipal Museum of Art (2021), Crow Museum of Asian Arts (2021), Yamaguchi Center for Arts and Media (2021), Edith-Russ Haus for Media Art (Oldenburg, 2019), Kunstverein in Hamburg (2018), Ming Contemporary Art Museum (Shanghai, 2018), Asia Art Archive (2017), Guggenheim Bilbao (2015), Mori Art Museum (2012). He represented the Singapore Pavilion at the 54th Venice Biennale (2011).
Clarissa Chikiamco is a curator with research interests in the moving image and post-war art in Southeast Asia. She was the acquisition curator of the inaugural collection of video art at the Philippine modern art museum, the Ateneo Art Gallery. At National Gallery Singapore, she has co-curated exhibitions "Between Declarations and Dreams: Art of Southeast Asia since the 19th Century", "Between Worlds: Raden Saleh and Juan Luna, A Fact Has No Appearance: Art Beyond the Object", "Chua Mia Tee: Directing the Real", and "Nam June Paik: The Future is Now". She is a PhD candidate in film studies at King’s College London, writing her thesis on the moving image in Philippine art.
30 янв 2024
