Art Stage Singapore Provides A Valuable Forum for South East Asian Artists
Last month the seventh edition of Art Stage Singapore art fair coincided with the fifth Singapore Biennial, and so artists, dealers, collectors and curators from across the region descended on the city state, not only for commerce and exposure, but for the lively exchange of ideas.
While the number of galleries and attendees contracted in comparison to previous years, there were 131 exhibitors from 27 different countries, many of whom allegedly reported significant sales.
While I suspect that some of those sales may have been attributable to redundant works on offer by established names such as Yayoi Kusama and Yoshitomo Nara, there were also plenty of galleries displaying work by emerging and mid-career artists local to the region.
For instance, Yeo Workshop presented work by a variety of Singapore based artists, including a striking piece by Stephanie Burt. Her installation, titled “Madeline & Molly” (2017), was a heterogenous assemblage of wood, metal, and string in her signature palette of warm pastels, culminating in a copy of her book O Dear What Can The Matter Be (2016), which combines original prose and poetry with excerpts from feminist authors such as Hélène Cixous.
Fearlessly fragile in its ad hoc construction, the work spoke to the pressures facing by the modern woman who is expected to exude femininity while also fighting for equal pay and recognition, both in the work place and the canon of art history.
Another adventurous booth was presented by Bangkok’s 1Projects, a curatorial effort by Charuwan Chanthop, who facilitated a collaborative installation titled “Decoy of Indra” by Thai artist Prasert Yodkaew and Vietnamese artist Richard Streitmatter-Tran.
The duo filled their booth with fresh clay sculptures made on location, plus an iPad which played footage of the artists balancing objects on their heads—a futile act that reinforced the sense of instability already inherent in the un-fired clay objects.
They repaired and added to their creations throughout the fair, such that their work became equal parts installation and performance. The sculptures imitated traditional Indochinese statuary and architecture, and at the end of the fair the artists destroyed their work in a gleeful act of non-attachment that would have made the Buddha proud.
The fair also featured two curated sections: the Southeast Asia Forum, which showcased emerging talent from across the region, and the Collectors Stage, which exhibited works on loan from Singapore based collectors.
The Collectors Stage could be summed up as a needy attempt to prove that Singaporean collectors can stand toe-to-toe with their Western counter-parts by showing off work by artists such as Steve McQueen and Rashid Johnson. Such works would appear right at home at Frieze or Basel, but displayed as trophies at Art Stage Singapore they felt a little bit out of place.
The Southeast Asia Forum was far more satisfying. This year’s edition was curated by Nadia Ng with the theme Net Present Value: Art, Capital, Futures. “Net Present Value” refers to expected returns on an investment, and so the exhibit explored the economic gamesmanship at play both in art and the across the region, where development is often taken as a given despite the rampantly unequal distribution of wealth.
This tension was particularly evident in the installation “Stake or Skewer” (2015) by Cambodian artist Svay Sareth, which consisted of cheap rubber sandals hung on a piece of wood. In the accompanying video “I, Svay Sareth, eat rubber sandals” (2015) the artist sits in a shanty town ripping sandals with his teeth in a symbolic reminder that acute poverty endures despite the proliferation of mass produced goods.
Svay’s work was presented by Sa Sa Bassac, the Phnom Penh non-profit run by Erin Gleeson, who also brought the work of two other artists dealing with issues of consumerism.
Jakkai Siributr’s intricately embroidered vests (originally made in Cambodian sweatshops) offered an alternative to the wastefulness of fast fashion, while Than Sok’s paintings depicted objects gifted to him upon leaving the buddhist monk-hood, such as a stick of deodorant and a tube of toothpaste. The humble objects themselves were presented in front of their painted versions, inviting us to put ourselves in a monk’s sandals and imagine what it would be like if these were our only worldly possessions.
Some of my favorite galleries from across the region were in the forum, such as Chiang Mai’s Gallery Seescape, who filled an entire booth with ironically plush rifles by Anon Pairot, and Ho Chi Minh City’s Galerie Quynh, who brought an installation by Trong Gia Nguyen titled Nouvou Ghetto, for which Nguyen coerced artist friends from across the world to perform scripted caricatures of themselves in their studios. Also in attendance was Bangkok’s TARS Gallery, who presented a far-out installation by the the architectural collective New Territories, consisting of videos and artifacts created by a blow-torch wielding robot.
The Southeast Asia Forum also featured panel discussions that delved into the relationship between art and money. At one such talk, a collector asked the panelists who might be the next “Damien Hirst” of the region, for which he earned a rebuke (surprisingly enough) from a dealer, who scolded him for viewing art purely as investment. A more generous response would have been to tell him to buy the work of Thai artist Rirkrit Tiravanija, who ranked number 36 in Artnet’s 2016 list of the 100 most influential art figures worldwide.
Although Rirkrit was not in attendance he still managed to make a splash at the fair, as the Singapore Tyler Print Institute sold a piece of his for a hefty 85,000 Singapore Dollars. Produced on residency at their print studio, it consisted of a math compass on a chrome pedestal and a giant globe of silver, raising questions about where to seek order in a tumultuous time, with the implicit answer that we must confront our own reflection.
In a recent interview, Art Stage founder Lorenzo Rudolf stated that in order for Southeast Asian artists to compete on the international stage, their work must be presented “as an entire Southeast Asian package” since no “single country has [a] chance of competing with the big scenes.”
Some artists from the region might bristle at this elision of their cultural differences, but his strategy seems to be working quite well for all intents and purposes, as it not only attracts curious collectors looking to branch out across the region, but also provides an opportunity for artists and professionals from different countries to get together and trade notes.
Perhaps we will soon see more nationally focused art fairs popping up (like Art Stage Jakarta, which will hold it’s second edition from August 11–13) but for now, Art Stage Singapore continues to provide a much needed outlet for the rising artists and plucky galleries that call Southeast Asia home.
