Singapore Biennale 2016: An Atlas of Mirrors

Exploring shared histories and current realities within and beyond the region, Singapore Biennale 2016 presents a constellation of artistic perspectives that provide unexpected ways of seeing the world and ourselves. Titled "An Atlas of Mirrors", the international contemporary art exhibition features site-specific and never seen before contemporary artworks by more than 60 artists across Southeast Asia, and East and South Asia.

Paracosmos by Harumi YukutakeSingapore Art Museum

An Everywhere of Mirrorings

Space and place are explored and glimpsed through mirrors and cartography, conjuring symmetrical and asymmetrical parallel worlds where the real, surreal, abstract and imaginary overlap.

Paracosmos (2016) by Harumi YukutakeSingapore Art Museum

The ‘membrane’ of hand-cut mirrors dissolves the definition between foreground and background by dissipating the single image into an explosion of reflections.

Enter the Parallel World (2001/2016) by H.H LimSingapore Art Museum

This installation comprises two video works. The first, About 60 kilos of wisdom, recalls a favourite saying of Lim’s mother, that wisdom is nothing more than the ability to keep a balanced state.

Enter the Parallel World (2001/2016) by H.H. LimSingapore Art Museum

The second video, The falling wisdom, represents the moment when this balance is broken: Lim’s fall from the basketball suggests the reality of corporeal limits.

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Kentaro Hiroki handpicks everyday objects discarded on the streets to form the basis for his works. The things he chooses are intended to be reflective of time and space: unique to the localities in which he finds them, each object has its own story to tell of the communities it was found in.

Desert Islands (2009/2016) by MAP OfficeSingapore Art Museum

The 100 mirrored islands presents a collection of islands that, despite their overlooked status, have played significant roles in shaping the global consciousness, and have become a point of reference for global desires, as well as fears and secrets today.

Behind the Light (2016) by Melati SuryodarmoSingapore Art Museum

'Behind the Light' proposes an exchange between the two sides of a mirror, illuminating the relationships between self, surface, society and the spiritual world.

SONICreflection (2016) by Zulkifle MahmodSingapore Art Museum

In exploring the micro-universes of Singapore’s cultural hodgepodge, Zulkifle’s work foregrounds the otherwise overlooked auditory character of each community and the space it inhabits.

Is it possible for an artist to look beyond officially constructed maps, and imagine a different past or an alternate future? Pothupitiye attempts to do so in this series, where he re-crafts the official version of maps to tell a different story.

The maps he constructs are like palimpsests where he overlays, juxtaposes and transforms portraits of voyages, landscapes, mythical figures and other maps to re-inscribe stories of Sri Lanka’s past and present, interspersed with his own personal history.

The Panji cycle is a collection of stories revolving around the legendary Prince Panji, which originated in Java around the fourteenth century and spread to what is now modern-day Malaysia, Cambodia, Myanmar, the Philippines and Thailand.

Image's outlines are rendered in scripts, starting with Javanese script, then flowing out into scripts reflecting the various regions and localities that this narrative has travelled to: a calligraphic cartography charting the movement of the Panji cycle throughout Southeast Asia.

Treasure Islands (2012) by Made WiantaSingapore Art Museum

'Treasure Islands' delves into overlooked chapters of Indonesia’s colonial past, threading together geographies as disparate as the tiny spice island of Rhun in Maluku, Indonesia, and the metropolis of Manhattan in New York.

Growing (2016) by Hemali BhutaSingapore Art Museum

'Growing' is informed by the Buddhist concept of dependent co-origination: human beings are a unique species, yet form part of the larger whole that is Nature; both are subject to the same cycles of birth, growth and death.

In this respect, we are like the single incense stick that aspires to be singular and ‘pure’ with its own novel fragrance, yet is also part of a larger perfumed environment.

I Wander, I Wonder (2016) by Dex FernandezSingapore Art Museum

This site-specific mural comprises of two counterpoint sets. One suite is based on the surviving possessions of people in Tacloban who lived through the deadly typhoon in 2013; the other suite centres on Filipinos in Singapore and depicts the objects they brought with them here.

The Most Mild Mannered Men by Fyerool DarmaSingapore Art Museum

A Presence of Pasts

Retrospection reveals the present as a thoroughfare where all realms coincide and are mirrored – where the personal nudges collective memory, the seen implies the unseen, and legacy evokes loss and forgetting.

Melampaui Batas (Beyond Boundaries) (2016) by Made DjirnaSingapore Art Museum

Within his installation of found objects is an antique ironwood boat, symbolic of journeying between the Nusantara (the Indonesian archipelago) and the larger world, as well as between the worlds of the living and the dead (in Balinese belief, the boat carries the soul to its ancestral abode after death).

Hundreds of terracotta figurines, symbolising humanity, exhibit individual expressions, even as their numbers suggest a community, and the clay, their frailty.

The Covenant (2016) by Sharmiza Abu HassanSingapore Art Museum

Sharmiza rereads and re-enacts two stories from the Malay Annals, a keystone of Malay literature, to re-examine some of the Malays’ traditional values and practices.

The episode of the covenant highlights the solemn oath made between Malay rulers and their subjects, while the tale of the swordfish attacks revolves around Hang Nadim, who saved Singapore from the attacks but was unjustly murdered by his king.

Gate (2003) by Do Ho SuhSingapore Art Museum

This artwork is modelled on a gate at the artist’s family home in Korea, itself constructed after a traditional scholar’s house built in the nineteenth century, and made with discarded wood from demolished palaces and other historical buildings.

Mardijker Photo Studio (2015) by Agan HarahapSingapore Art Museum

Harahap reworks archival photographs to present fictive portraits of the Mardijkers, a community of descendants of freed slaves found in major cities in the East Indies (present-day Indonesia).

The superimposition of European faces on ‘native’ bodies, and vice versa, captures the fluidity and instability of identities within this community, a situation which the artist views as analogous to contemporary Indonesia’s negotiation with ‘global’ culture.

The Name (2008/2017) by Tun Win Aung & Wah NuSingapore Art Museum

The husband-and-wife artist duo have resurrected figures from the nineteenth-century Anglo-Burmese Wars and beyond, recuperating an autochthonous historical voice against what they perceive as a colonial narrative.

The Most Mild Mannered Men (2016) by Fyerool DarmaSingapore Art Museum

Driven by his concern about a growing historical amnesia, Fyerool Darma departs from his characteristic painting practice to present sculptures of two key figures in Singapore history: an appropriated bust of Sir Stamford Raffles by Sir Francis Legatt Chantrey, and a bustless pedestal inscribed with the name, birth and death dates of Sultan Hussein Mua’zzam Shah.

Memory of the Blind Elephant (2016) by Phuong Linh NguyenSingapore Art Museum

Fascinated by colonial rubber plantations and the role they have played and continue to play in Vietnam, Phuong Linh explores the materiality of rubber and investigates the historical significance of the country’s rubber trees and plantations.

History Repeats Itself (2016) by TitarubiSingapore Art Museum

'History Repeats Itself' is a meditation on the history of power, seeking to make visible the legacies of colonial conquest in Southeast Asia. The burnt-out ships in this installation recall the ominous appearance of European armadas on the horizon during the early centuries of European colonialism.

Standing atop the charred ships are shadowy, cloaked figures. Their robes are made of gold-plated nutmeg, a spice once worth its weight in gold, over which countless wars were fought.

Knitting the Future by Chia ChuyiaSingapore Art Museum

A Culture of Nature

Mirroring the dialectical relationship between Nature and Culture, Art evolves from aesthetisation and the ‘perfecting’ of Nature into myriad dimensions, and reconsiders the implications of human presence in the natural world.

Noah's Garden II (2016) by Deng GuoyuanSingapore Art Museum

This site-specific work is at once a garden of artificial flora and a labyrinth of mirrors. Entering the installation, viewers find themselves inside a kaleidoscope, where the surrounding infinite mirror images create a feeling of the loss of subjectivity.

Good Boy, Bad Boy (2016) by Chou Shih HsiungSingapore Art Museum

Chou’s frame-like plexiglass containers hold heavy, dark petroleum and can also be seen as a time capsule, as the creation of petroleum in nature takes at least two million years. Moreover, the ‘painting’ stays in a liquid form and keeps flowing; it will never solidify as an oil painting does.

Locus Amoenus (2016) by Ryan VillamaelSingapore Art Museum

Latin for a “pleasant place”, the phrase Locus Amoenus also evokes the notion of an escape into an ideal landscape. In this instance, the pastoral paradise has been sited within a house of glass – the greenhouse – an engineered Eden for flora uprooted from its native soil.

Indeed, Villamael’s ‘greenhouse’ houses unusual foliage: intricate cut-outs created from archaic and contemporary Philippine maps. Coalescing notions of nature and nurture, culture and the cultivated, the work probes the imaging of the Philippines’ fraught history as the country that endured the longest colonial rule in Southeast Asia.

Han Sai Por (2016) by Han Sai PorSingapore Art Museum

Representing the charred wood from ongoing deforestation activities, these evocative ‘columns of nature’ prick our conscience, yet attest to Nature’s resilience against every imaginable catastrophe.

The Hunters Enter the Woods (2016) by Patricia Perez EustaquioSingapore Art Museum

The left side portrays the Paphiopedilum fowler, an endangered wild orchid that can be found in the Singapore Botanic Gardens. The adjoining panel depicts a recently named orchid hybrid: as part of this artwork’s commissioning process,

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In this durational performance piece, the artist slowly knits a body-length garment out of leeks over five weeks. Chia is of ethnic Teochew Chinese background, and the leek holds significance for the Chinese diaspora.

The Unity of N Monuments (2016) by Jiao XingtaoSingapore Art Museum

This artwork considers transformations between the daily-used object, the readymade and sculpture. In taking this approach the artist questions perceived reality, and examines the differences between what is true and what we see and understand.

Aftermath by Pannaphan YodmaneeSingapore Art Museum

An Endlessness of Beginnings

Contemplating cyclical time brings insight into how myths influence human conditioning; when, and why, story tells more than history; and our lives amidst timespans of elemental substances that transcend human measure.

Inscription of the Island (2016) by Lim Soo NgeeSingapore Art Museum

In Lim’s imagination, this was once part of a colossal statue that guided the ships of an ancient, mythical civilisation.

Yin-Yang Calendar (2016) by Xiao LuSingapore Art Museum

In this 2016 work, Xiao explores the contrast between the Western solar calendar and the Chinese lunar one. Two long black and white stripes are juxtaposed to stand for the two calendar systems.

The Skeleton of Makara (The Myth of a Myth (2016) by Tan Zi HaoSingapore Art Museum

One of the most prevalent mythological icons in Southeast Asia is the makara, which originated in Hinduism. Depicted as a hybrid of different animals, typically half-mammal and half-fish, it has penetrated cultural, religious and philosophical discourses.

One Has to Wander through All the Outer Worlds to Reach the Innermost Shrine at the End (2016) by Qiu Zhi JieSingapore Art Museum

In his creation of maps, Qiu adopts a methodology that incorporates daily experience as well as a philosophical approach to thinking with graphics, and organising relationships and systems of knowledge. This map series presents Qiu’s investigation into cartographic history.

Qiu’s installation features a handblown glass bestiary of fantastical monsters, imagined as traversing between the mountains and the seas, conjuring a world of mystery that may once have been out there, but has now disappeared.

Karagatan (The Breadth of Oceans) (2016) by Gregory HaliliSingapore Art Museum

'Karagatan' portrays the eyes of residents in coastal villages across the Philippines, ranging from fishermen to pearl divers, a master boat-builder, shell traders and others.

The result of the artist’s research are delicate paintings that capture the tiny, distinctive characteristics of each subject’s eye: lines, curves and contours, which transform into unusual and unexpected portraits.

Invisible Force (2015) by Ni YouyuSingapore Art Museum

'Invisible Force' reproduces part of the sky as photographed by NASA, using almost thirty thousand industrial magnets to represent the invisible gravitational forces between celestial bodies.

Atlas (2016) by Ni YouyuSingapore Art Museum

'Atlas' makes use of pinball machines, collected by the artist and processed through hand-painting and refitting. The image of the Greek god Atlas bearing the night sky echoes the theme of the Singapore Biennale.

Dust (Singapore Galaxy) (2016) by Ni YouyuSingapore Art Museum

'Dust (Singapore Galaxy)' is based on a photograph of the night sky around Singapore. The seemingly random scattering of chalk dust is in fact a precise placement and measuring out of dust in relation to stellar distributions. The Chinese character for “dust” refers both to the socially under-privileged, and the ordinary and the mundane, but here it is transformed into the limitless universe.

Aftermath (2016) by Pannaphan YodmaneeSingapore Art Museum

In a titanic mural, Pannaphan presents a mapping of the Buddhist cosmos that resembles a landscape painting. Using materials raw and natural, as well as the new and mass-produced, her amalgamation of contemporary and traditional Thai art creates a unified cartography of the heavens and the earth that chronicles Southeast Asian history.

Pannaphan’s ongoing investigation of the intersecting points between Buddhist cosmology and modern science has led her to consider the concepts of change, loss, devastation and inevitable armageddon.

History (2013/2015) by Phasao LaoSingapore Art Museum

Lao’s History series is a rudimentary chronicle of his Hmong clan. Each panel includes a black border of motifs that symbolise ‘spirits’, and an outline of different ancestors or leaders in red, the colour of strength and courage.

Spirit of Sky and Earth 3 & 4 and Tree Spirit (2012/2016) by Tcheu SiongSingapore Art Museum

Particular to Siong’s artistic repertoire are the lanky creatures – featured prominently on each panel – that represent the ‘shadows’, ‘spirits’ or ‘souls’ of her dreams, which her husband Lao, the village shaman, interprets.

Jaonua: The Nothingness (King of Meat: The Nothingness) (2016) by Araya RasdjarmrearnsookSingapore Art Museum

In this installation, Araya has woven various stories together into a cohesive experience. Almost akin to a surrealistic dream, she invites audiences to ponder with her the karmic consequences of being entrapped within the Sisyphean cycle of existence.

Endless Hours at Sea (2014/2016) by Martha AtienzaSingapore Art Museum

This multimedia installation brings together material Atienza recorded from four oceanic journeys on cargo ships, and immerses the viewer in the constant state of flux that characterises life on board these vessels.

Putar Alam Café by Azizan PaimanSingapore Art Museum

A Breath of Wills

Encountering injustice, selves resist, sometimes acting on behalf of others, often at personal cost; yet the silenced, in finding their voice and agency, also face the limits of representation.

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'Putar Alam Café' is an interactive space with a transistor radio, a television broadcasting a news channel (with the volume muted), and recent works by the artist.

China Action (1999) by Wen Pu LinSingapore Art Museum

'China Action' is another of Wen’s signature works, documenting the Beijing-centred yet nationally influential art movements of the 1980s and 1990s, with a particular focus on the emergence of performance art and its impact on contemporary art.

Ling Long Tower (2015) by Zang Hong HuaSingapore Art Museum

'Ling Long Tower' by Zang Honghua is inspired by Wen’s two films and investigates the Songzhuang Artists Village in Beijing. These three films capture the Chinese art world from the 1980s to 2011 in a humorous and quick-witted style, as it vigorously yet chaotically evolved from its earlier ‘wild’ state into a mature presence in the global art world.

Unwalked Boundaries (2016) by S.ChandrasekaranSingapore Art Museum

Building on Chandrasekaran’s exploration of body and identity, this installation – in the form of “an intention to walk” – focuses on the thousands of Indian convicts who, from 1825 to 1873, were transported to Singapore and served their sentence as manual labourers.

Soap Blocked (2016) by H.Tein LinSingapore Art Museum

A map of Myanmar, painstakingly constructed of a thousand squares of sculpted Shwe Wah soap, testifies to the artist’s tumultuous life. While in prison for almost seven years, he made art on scraps of fabric, prison uniforms – and in soap. From a bar of soap, he carved a little captive human figure, trapped within the claustrophobic confines of four walls.

Hearings (2016) by Jack TanSingapore Art Museum

As an artist-in-residence at CJC and the Courts, Tan attended court proceedings, listened to the soundscape of the courts, paying attention to the use of voice, and documented what he heard as drawings. The artist turned his drawings into graphic scores, which were then interpreted and sung by the Anglo-Chinese Junior College Alumni Choir.

“If you can dream a better world you can make a better world or perhaps travel between them” by Melissa TanSingapore Art Museum

A Share of Borders

Walls and boundaries bear witness that overlapping territories are strategically and ideologically mapped and staked; yet is there common ground, belonging to neither party on either side of the drawn line?

"If you can dream a better world you can make a better world or perhaps travel between them" (2016) by Melissa TanSingapore Art Museum

This work features laboriously and painstakingly hand-cut paper and laser-cut metal sculptures that translate the continually expanding urban physical landscape and terrain of Singapore into abstract visual and sonic contemporary expressions.

Presented as an imagined island sculpture together with three ‘music boxes’, the artwork incorporates ‘data points’ that are composed of impressions made on physical features such as pavements, paths, walkways and roads.

Land of Undefined Territory (2014/2015) by Munem WasifSingapore Art Museum

Repetitive frames of barren land with no significant geographical or political identity: this land could be anywhere, as the title of the artwork suggests, and yet it is not. It is one of the most contested territories in recent history, over which lives have been lost and wars have been fought: the border that separates India from Bangladesh.

These photographs explore not only people’s political relationship to land, but also the effects of aggressive industrialisation.

Another Chronicle of Loss, Sarhad 3, Testimony and Shadow, Stains (2015) by Nilima SheikhSingapore Art Museum

'Another Chronicle of Loss' and 'Shadows, Stains' are informed by the poems of Kashmiri poet Aga Shahid Ali, while Sheikh’s extensive use of stencilwork alludes to the latticework typical of vernacular Kashmiri architecture. Her paintings are a multifaceted meditation on the nature of destroyed beauty, the necessity of memory, and the forms and adequacy of memorialisation.

Srinagar II (2016) by Praneet SoiSingapore Art Museum

In 'Srinagar II', Soi explores the plurality of influences in Kashmir and the migratory nature of forms and images through the papier-mâché tiles. The slideshow of Sufi shrines and other images are an ongoing visual diary of Srinagar that Soi constantly updates.