Wrapping up our third season, we invited back curator Hsu Fang-Tze to dig deep into the practice of Artist-in-Residence Anthony Chin. In their insightful exchange, Anthony discusses his art-making process that often begins with extensive research into archives addressing imperial and colonial histories, and how this eventually informs the conceptualisation of his site-specific installations that bring to light the geopolitical reverberations that continue to resonate until today. Anthony also considers how his background in industrial design has shaped his practice and interest in the symbolic significance of objects.

The research-driven conceptual practice of Anthony Chin grows out of site-specific engagements with the historical, social, and architectural stratifications of a place. Through the articulation of ordinary materials into poetic installations, his work unravel the latent power structures and complex geopolitical narratives that undergird the colonial past and the post-colonial present. He has regularly presented his work in Singapore and abroad.

Hsu Fang-Tze is currently a curator at the Singapore Art Museum (SAM), with previous experience as a lecturer in the Department of Communications and New Media at the National University of Singapore (NUS). Over the past decade, she has extended her expertise beyond academia, actively engaging as a curator, film programmer, and archivist. Her collaborative efforts with artists, art historians, and institutions have been the most important aspects for her in defining her practices. Her current research pursuits revolve around the nuanced exploration of sonic modernity, Cold War aesthetics, and the convergence of critical curation historiography with a decolonial pedagogical approach.

Contributors: Anthony Chin, Hsu Fang-Tze
Editor: Magdalena Magiera
Programme Manager: Nadia Amalina
Sound Engineer: Ashwin Menon
Intro & Outro Music: Zachary Chan
Cover Image & Design: Arabelle Zhuang, Kristine Tan

In this episode, we invited curator Syaheedah Iskandar to explore the multidimensional practice of Artist-in-Residence Irfan Kasban. This conversation marks a full-circle moment for the two as they first collaborated for Hutang Belantara, a public programme at NTU CCA Singapore back in 2016 when Syaheedah was Curatorial Assistant with us at the Centre. The two trace through Irfan’s background that has seen him wear varying hats, weaving through theatre and sound, and addressing what drew to the arts. Irfan also opens up about the significance of curiosity in guiding his working process that is largely collaborative, open, and ever-evolving. He also shares about the various communal activities he held in the studio that he has affectionately called Port of Reciprocity, also the title of his long-term research project.

The transdisciplinary practice of Irfan Kasban weaves together multiple roles such as playwright, theatre director, lighting and sound designer, and multimedia artist. Often engaging in collaborations with fellow artists as a method of experimenting across mediums, Irfan creates intricate worlds guided by a principle of visceral ephemerality in an attempt to redefine boundaries between performance, artwork, artist, and audience. 

Syaheedah Iskandar is currently Assistant Curator at Singapore Art Museum. She works with vernacular ideas of seeing, thinking, and being. Drawing from Southeast Asia’s visual culture(s), she is interested in the entanglements between the unseen, the hypervisual, and their translations from material to new media practices. She holds an MA in History of Art and Archaeology from the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London.

Contributors: Irfan Kasban, Syaheedah Iskandar
Editor: Magdalena Magiera
Programme Manager: Nadia Amalina
Sound Engineer: Ashwin Menon
Intro & Outro Music: Zachary Chan
Cover Image & Design: Arabelle Zhuang, Kristine Tan 

This episode features a conversation between Artist-in-Residence Shahmen Suku and Singaporean artist Moses Tan. With disparate practices, the two find synergy as they uncover shared ground in their drawn-out path in becoming a visual artist. They discuss how Shahmen’s experience growing up as a minority in Singapore shaped his practice that employs humour and double-meanings to confront difficult truths. Shahmen also ponders upon the position he occupies in straddling the lines between performance within theatre, performativity, and performance within the visual arts.

 
Shahmen Suku is a performance artist who works between Sydney and Canberra, Australia. Drawing from his personal experience of growing up in a matriarchal Tamil household in Singapore, Shahmen’s body of work explores multifaceted perspectives on migration, displacement, race, culture, colonisation, and gender identity. The personal, poignant, and irreverent narratives generated around these themes are conveyed through performances, installations, and video works and they are often voiced by his alter ego, Radha. 

Moses Tan is a Singapore-based artist whose work explores histories that intersect with queer theory and politics while looking at melancholia and shame as points of departure. Working with sculpture, drawing, video and installation, his interest lies in the use of subtlety and codes in the articulation of narratives. He currently programs and runs starch.sg, an artist-run space in Singapore. 

Contributors: Shahmen Suku, Moses Tan
Editor: Magdalena Magiera
Programme Manager: Nadia Amalina
Sound Engineer: Ashwin Menon
Intro & Outro Music: Zachary Chan
Cover Image & Design: Arabelle Zhuang, Kristine Tan 

In this episode, we entrusted curator and scholar Karin Oen to converse with our Artist-in-Residence Yanyun Chen. The two come together for a fascinating conversation revolving around the significance of the studio in Yanyun’s practice, revealing how it can act as a stable space for generative experimentation, exploration, and inspiration during transitional periods. Throughout the exchange, Yanyun divulges the importance of materiality in her practice, how the residency has influenced new modes of thinking and working, and the innocuous comments that kindled her interest towards her current research project. They also touch upon Yanyun’s concurrent practices, contemplating the value in allowing them to unfold and weave together naturally.

Dr. Yanyun Chen is a visual artist who works across drawings, new media, and installation. Her artistic practice unravels fictional and philosophical notions of embodiment exploring how heritage and legacies are grounded in the physicality of human and botanical forms.

Dr. Karin Oen is a curator and art historian based in Singapore where she is Senior Lecturer and Head of the Department of Art History at NTU’s School of Humanities. She works on historical, modern, and contemporary creative practices related to the transcultural and the transmediatic. 

Contributors: Yanyun Chen, Karin Oen
Editor: Magdalena Magiera
Programme Manager: Nadia Amalina
Sound Engineer: Ashwin Menon
Intro & Outro Music: Zachary Chan
Cover Image & Design: Arabelle Zhuang, Kristine Tan

In this episode, curator Syed Muhammad Hafiz digs deep into the practice of Artist-in-Residence Ben Loong. We are pleased to bring the two of them back together since their last collaboration two years ago for Squaring the Circle, Ben’s solo exhibition curated by Hafiz. In this contemplative conversation, the two trace their concurrent professional growth over the years of collaboration and friendship, all while delving into Ben’s ever evolving artistic sensibilities and interests. They address the significance of the studio space for the development of a material-based practice and how the discipline necessary to upkeep such a space seeps into Ben’s everyday routine. Throughout the conversation, they also weave in discussions on the perennial question of form versus function, the future of ceramics in the current era of technological emphasis, as well as other core themes underlying Ben’s practice such as the value of labour, craftsmanship, and aesthetics in the art world. 

 
Working at the intersection of painting and sculpture, Ben Loong explores themes and questions of utility within traditional craftsmanship. Through the manipulation of industrial and mass-produced materials and the observation of textures and patterns in the everyday, his practice attempts to challenge the value systems embedded in our material culture. 

Syed Muhammad Hafiz is a curator and art historian based in Singapore. He has worked in the arts and in heritage museums over the past decade and also curated for galleries in Singapore, Malaysia, and Indonesia. Besides curating exhibitions, he has also spoken at various symposiums and frequently contributes his writings to publications on Southeast Asian art.

Contributors: Ben Loong, Syed Muhammad Hafiz
Editor: Anna Lovecchio
Programme Manager: Nadia Amalina
Sound Engineer: Ashwin Menon
Intro & Outro Music: Zachary Chan
Cover Image & Design: Arabelle Zhuang, Kristine Tan

Kicking off the first episode of our third season, we hand the microphone over to acclaimed playwright, writer, and poet Alfian Sa’at for a conversation with our Artist-in-Residence Zulkhairi Zulkiflee. In this insightful exchange dotted with amusing observations on Singaporean Malay slang, the two trace Zulkhairi’s artistic trajectory—from his educational background to his ongoing inquiry into Malay social ontology and into the politics of representation. Throughout the conversation, they discuss the trope of the “Malay boy” that features prominently across Zulkhairi’s body of work, addressing questions of agency, empowerment, and the subject-object dichotomy in art. Zulkhairi also opens up about his current research on the Malay slang word “world” which he frames as a concept and a creative proposition to find new ways of looking at historical representations of minorities.

Before they take it a way, a quick introduction.

With a body of work spanning across film, installation, and photography, the artistic practice of Zulkhairi Zulkiflee is committed to exploring Malay identity and its social ontology. His lens-based artworks investigate themes of Malayness in relation to local and global contexts, social agency, knowledge production, and notions of taste. Zulkhairi is also an educator, independent curator, and founder of Sikap, a project group that engages with the creative value of ‘let do’ in the form of organizational experiments. 

Alfian Sa’at is the Resident Playwright of the theatre company Wild Rice. His published works include collections of poetry, short stories, flash fiction, and plays. In 2001, Alfian won the Golden Point Award for Poetry as well as the National Arts Council Young Artist Award for Literature. In past years, Alfian has received the Best Original Script at the Life! Theatre Awards four times and was nominated for the Singapore Literature Price three times. 

Contributors: Zulkhairi Zulkiflee, Alfian Sa'at
Editor: Anna Lovecchio
Programme Manager: Nadia Amalina
Sound Engineer: Ashwin Menon
Intro & Outro Music: Zachary Chan
Cover Image & Design: Arabelle Zhuang, Kristine Tan

In this episode, we hand over the microphone to curator Tamares Goh to interview our Artist-in-Residence Wang Ruobing. Ruobing and Tamares share a long history of working together throughout their careers, one that goes back to 2004 and will continue on in the years to come. This conversation between peers shines a spotlight on Ruobing’s practice rooted in materiality, the importance of found objects in her art-making process, as well as her ongoing research into the symbiotic relationship between environmental sciences and visual arts. They also touch upon the collaborations Ruobing has activated with deep-sea divers and marine scientists, and how these collaborations continue to shape the trajectory of her artistic practice.

Committed to exploring new ways of seeing and methods of knowledge production, the artistic practice of Dr Wang Ruobing stretches from drawing to photography, sculpture, kinetic art, and installation. With a diverse range of methodological approaches to present her ideas, her body of work addresses environmental issues and transcultural discourses on identity and hybridity.

Tamares Goh is the deputy director of Audience Engagement at National Gallery Singapore, overseeing festivals like Light To Night, Painting With Light and the Gallery’s Childrens Biennale. She was the former head of Visual Arts at Esplanade – Theatres on the Bay, and co-headed the Programming department overseeing festivals and programmes. In 2017, she was the Producer for the Singapore Pavilion at the 57th Venice Biennale.

Contributors: Wang Ruobing, Tamares Goh
Editor: Anna Lovecchio
Programme Manager: Nadia Amalina
Sound Engineer: Ashwin Menon
Intro & Outro Music: Yuen Chee Wai
Cover Image & Design: Arabelle Zhuang, Kristine Tan

This episode features a conversation between two multidisciplinary creatives who are also previous collaborators: Artist-in-Residence Zachary Chan and Singaporean playwright Joel Tan. The two come together for a fascinating exchange revolving around Zachary’s research into the religion he grew up with, Pentecostal Christianity, as well as the practice of spiritual mapping and strategic-level spiritual warfare. This research thread unraveled out of Restless Topographies, a project they developed together during a residency at the Goethe Institute Singapore last year. Throughout the conversation, they weave together personal experiences, insights, and revelations, with discussions of the historical anecdotes and religious texts that Zachary has been poring over during his time in residence at NTU CCA Singapore. They also contemplate upon Zachary’s proclivity for collaborations and how the residency has afforded him time to focus on his solo artistic practice. 

Spanning several mediums, the work of Zachary Chan reflects his composite background in visual communications, graphic design, and sonic arts. His practice often unfolds through collaborations with other artists and he has written music and designed sound for experimental films, theatre plays, video games, storytelling, and art installations.

Joel Tan is a writer and performer based between London and Singapore. His interdisciplinary practice examines the ways in which politics distort the personal and spiritual, exploring subjects ranging from colonial history, nature, queer experience, and contemporary Singapore life. 

Contributors: Zachary Chan, Joel Tan
Editor: Anna Lovecchio
Programme Manager: Nadia Amalina
Sound Engineer: Ashwin Menon
Intro & Outro Music: Yuen Chee Wai
Cover Image & Design: Arabelle Zhuang, Kristine Tan