Installation (Installation)

The work Calendars is composed of 1001 images of deserted public areas in Singapore printed on pages of a calendar set from the year of 2020 until 2096. Yet Chong photographed these public spaces (shopping centers, museums, MRT stations and schools) between 2004 and 2010. Calendars continues Hong’s conceptual investigation of the intersections between time, space and situation.

Painting (Painting)

With a habit of reading eight to ten books at the same time, Chong paints his two-foot tall novel covers through referencing an extensive reading list (accessible on Facebook) he has kept since 2006. Entitled “Bibliography (1): The Lonely Ones,” the list outlines representations of solitude that has been imposed on individuals or communities. Chong divides these archetypes into three over-arching notions: the Hide-away, the Castaway and the Prisoner.

Film & Video (Film & Video)

Part of an installation commissioned by National Gallery Singapore, The Weaver’s Lament by Erika Tan addresses the invisibility of women textile artists and their labor. Tan’s video focuses on the story of a forgotten weaver, Halimah Binti Abdullah, who participated in the 1924 British Empire Exhibition in the United Kingdom. A minor figure in the exhibition histories of what was formerly known as Malaya, Abdullah’s loom was left behind at the end of the exhibition, now residing in the Victoria and Albert Museum.

Film & Video (Film & Video)

Originally commissioned for documenta 14, Khvay Samnang’s two-channel video work Preah Kunlong (The way of the spirit) takes land politics, resource extraction and Indigenous Cambodian resistance as its primary concern. Created in collaboration with the classically-trained dancer and choreographer Nget Rady — who is also the performer in the video — Preah Kunlong powerfully utilizes a lexicon of gestures and movement to point toward the need for embodied forms of knowledge and understanding amidst the mechanistic frameworks of rapacious development, which are threatening not just forests and Indigenous communities in Southeast Asia, but also worldwide. More specifically, Preah Kunlong offers a proposal for the language of the body to exercise what political ecologist Nancy Lee Peluso has called “counter-mapping”, a form of “critical cartography” that has been practiced by Indigenous forest communities in Southeast Asia to strengthen claims on their traditional territories and resources by defying hegemonic mapmaking methods, which have long abetted strategies of colonial rule and resource extraction.

Film & Video (Film & Video)

Zeppelintribüne (2002) was shot near the Zepelintribune in Nuremberg, designed by Albert Speer, chief architect of the Third Reich. The 360-metre-long structure is part of a larger architectural complex called the Zeppelinfeld, which the National Socialist used for their marches and rallies. The Zeppelintribune was immortalized in the Leni Reifenstahl’s film-propaganda masterpiece the Triumph of the Will, a record of a 1934 Nazi Party rally.

Photography (Photography)

Invited in 2007 to the Museum Folkwang in Essen (Germany), Simon Starling questioned its history: known for its collections and particularly for its early engagement in favor of modern art (including the acquisition and exhibition of works by Cézanne, Gauguin, Van Gogh, Matisse), then destroyed during the Second World War, the museum was pillaged for its masterpieces of ‘degenerate art’ by the nazis. Starling found photographs of a hang dating back to 1929, taken by Albert Renger-Patzsch, the German New Objectivity photographer. Firstly, he researched the artworks that were presented then which for the most part had been restituted or acquired by private collectors after the war.

Photography (Photography)

Naoya Hatakeyama’s series Rikuzentakata (2011) documents the devastating aftermath of the 2011 Tohoku earthquake and tsunami in Japan. Throughout the series of sixty C-prints (five of which are included in the Kadist Art Foundation’s collection), Hatakeyama’s photographs depict scenes of torn landscapes and leveled homes, demolished villages and massive piles of detritus pummeled beyond recognition. The images serve as records of disaster, seemingly driven by an intense need to bear witness to collective trauma.

Photography (Photography)

Naoya Hatakeyama’s series Rikuzentakata (2011) documents the devastating aftermath of the 2011 Tohoku earthquake and tsunami in Japan. Throughout the series of sixty C-prints (five of which are included in the Kadist Art Foundation’s collection), Hatakeyama’s photographs depict scenes of torn landscapes and leveled homes, demolished villages and massive piles of detritus pummeled beyond recognition. The images serve as records of disaster, seemingly driven by an intense need to bear witness to collective trauma.

Photography (Photography)

Naoya Hatakeyama’s series Rikuzentakata (2011) documents the devastating aftermath of the 2011 Tohoku earthquake and tsunami in Japan. Throughout the series of sixty C-prints (five of which are included in the Kadist Art Foundation’s collection), Hatakeyama’s photographs depict scenes of torn landscapes and leveled homes, demolished villages and massive piles of detritus pummeled beyond recognition. The images serve as records of disaster, seemingly driven by an intense need to bear witness to collective trauma.

Photography (Photography)

Naoya Hatakeyama’s series Rikuzentakata (2011) documents the devastating aftermath of the 2011 Tohoku earthquake and tsunami in Japan. Throughout the series of sixty C-prints, Hatakeyama’s photographs depict scenes of torn landscapes and leveled homes, demolished villages and massive piles of detritus pummeled beyond recognition. The images serve as records of disaster, seemingly driven by an intense need to bear witness to collective trauma.

Photography (Photography)

Naoya Hatakeyama’s series Rikuzentakata (2011) documents the devastating aftermath of the 2011 Tohoku earthquake and tsunami in Japan. Throughout the series of sixty C-prints (five of which are included in the Kadist Art Foundation’s collection), Hatakeyama’s photographs depict scenes of torn landscapes and leveled homes, demolished villages and massive piles of detritus pummeled beyond recognition. The images serve as records of disaster, seemingly driven by an intense need to bear witness to collective trauma.

Film & Video (Film & Video)

Between 1951 and 1974, Dr. Albert M. Kligman, a professor of dermatology at the University of Pennsylvania, oversaw medical experiments conducted on incarcerated people at Holmesburg Prison in Philadelphia. These non­therapeutic tests ranged from athlete’s foot powders, dandruff shampoos, deodorants, and detergents, as well as more hazardous materials such as dioxin, radioactive isotopes, and mind-altering psychotropics. During his tenure at Holmesburg, Dr. Kligman worked for companies such as Johnson & Johnson, developing the acne medicine Retin-A, and for Dow Chemical Company and the U. S. Department of Defence, testing the ‘tactical herbicide’ Agent Orange.

Film & Video (Film & Video)

APA JIKA, The Mis-Placed Comma is one of three works Erika Tan filmed within exhibition spaces during the final stages of their transition from colonial period law courts to the National Gallery Singapore. Part of an on-going body of work, this video focuses on the figure of a forgotten weaver, Halimah Binti Abdullah, who participated in the 1924 British Empire Exhibition in the United Kingdom. A minor figure in the exhibition histories of what was formerly known as Malaya (today, Singapore and Malaysia), Halimah exists as a series of footnotes, gaining historical attention only for the act of a premature death from pneumonia, in London and away from home.