Huge halls, well-facilitated rooms and outdoor sites have been allocated to a single artist at five different locations across the city.[break]
This was my first time at an international biennale and I was left envying the spacious galleries, the participating artists, and the visitors. And so when a local resident, commented that the biennale this year wasn’t as good as its two previous editions, I was left wondering. If I could take all of this to Kathmandu, I wouldn’t be complaining at all.
When are Nepali artists and viewers going to get this kind of opportunity back at home?
Almost all the rooms at Nepal Academy of Fine Arts (NAFA) in Naxal have been converted into office spaces. All that’s left for now is the Araniko Gallery, where the Varsha exhibition held last year was not only pitiable but sad. NAFA does have plans for a new complex and for a SAARC Triennial, but I am not sure how long the wait will be.
Despite a trip cramped with too much to do and see in less than a week, with the help of a Singaporean friend, I was able to visit three venues: Singapore Art Museum (SAM)/ SAM at 8Q, Old Kallang Airport and National Museum of Singapore (NMS).
The free shuttle buses provided for the Biennale helped facilitate travel from one location to another.
SB2011 is organized by the Singapore Art Museum (SAM), a public institution, and is supported by the National Arts Council of Singapore. My exploration began at SAM.
Simon Fujiwara’s (UK) Welcome to Hotel Munber had already created a controversy, due to its overtly sexual content since the Biennale’s opening on March 13.
I was lucky, I should say, that I got there before Fujiwara’s installation was censored without the artist’s consent by SAM. Now it remains temporarily closed.
Louie Cordero’s (The Philippines) grotesque life size mutilated figures didn’t grasp my attention for too long while I was on site. Only after researching more on the history of ‘My Way Killings’ in the artist’s country, I appreciated his installation that reflects on popular culture.
A videoke, machine in the room shows Filipinos singing My Way by Frank Sinatra at local karaoke bars, a song that has spurred many fights and a handful of deaths. The installation titled My We is as comically bizarre as the killings.
With exhibitions spread over four levels, the tour of SAM at 8Q was a hurried one. What retained in my mind was Factum by Candice Breitz that depicts interviews of seven pairs of twins and a set of triplets.
Shown on dual and tri-channel video installations, the footages show how these identical siblings either share or have distinct opinions and are different ‘individuals’ in themselves.
Among several works referring to consumerism and popular culture in SB2011, Roslisham Ismail a.k.a Ise’s (Malaysia) Secret Affair is one.
The contents of six refrigerators, that visitors are allowed to open and peek into, reveal the lifestyle of six Singaporean families. An activity one might simply pass off as mundane, I nonetheless, opened one refrigerator after another: too much meat, hardly any food, too organized, this one is stuffed! Food for thought, in the most literal sense.
Something that I regrettably missed out in the rush was Koh Nguang How’s (Singapore) installation of newspaper cuttings and pages, Artists in the News. A work in progress, the artist, archivist and curator has been collecting and documenting news materials on Singapore’s art since late 1980s.
The SB2011 has on show a selection of pages from How’s Singapore Art Archive Project established in 2005.
Some 10-minute walk away from SAM is the NMS. Two works that caught my attention belonged to Tiffany Chung (Vietnam) and a husband and wife team Shao Yinong and Muchen (China).
Stored in a Jar: Monsoon, Drowning Fish, Color of Water, and the Floating World presents a floating city with 43 houseboats and 70 riverboats, a rather utopian solution for growing urbanization.
The couple, on the other hand, presented huge silk embroideries of defunct Chinese currencies, reminding one of instable political conditions.
Hanging on long black drapes that make a pathway for visitors, the figures on the notes looked monumental. While I mulled over our own currency, a few days later, I found out that the withdrawal of Nepali notes with the king’s head had been cancelled.
The biggest disadvantage of having little time was not being able to look at all the video installations from the beginning until the end.. Phil Collins’s (UK) video The Meaning of Style installed at Old Kallang Airport, on the skinhead subculture in Malaysia is a short one.
Nevertheless, it wasn’t the only reason why I sat down and took time to watch the video twice.
I was compelled by the music, the content, the simplicity of the narrative of the subculture that is often misunderstood. It is my favorite piece from the Biennale.
On the flipside, SB2011 also had some works that flew over my head even though I tried to understand the artist’s perspective after reading the captions and listening to the audio guide. To name a few are Michael Beutler (Germany), Robert Macpherson (Australia), Michael Lin (Japan) and
Mike Nelson (UK). While, some weren’t appealing to me, not all works were of the highest standards.
With no particular theme, SB2011 goes by the title ‘Open House’, claiming to ‘bring something to everyone.’ And for my first experience, it did open me to a lot of new perspectives, ideas and creative processes that I hope will soon come to Nepal as well.
Kanchan G Budhathoki is the contributing arts editor for Republica