Seni Singapore, an art expo to bring out Asian identity

Seni Singapore, an art expo to bring out Asian identity

ANN, The Straits Times/Singapore

You can clean up your shirt, not to mention your perceptions of visual art as just pretty pictures hanging on a wall, at Seni Singapore.

For example, one of the things you can do at the two-month- long event, which kicks off Oct 1, is to get your shirt washed by Indonesian artists simulating the role of migrant workers.

The members of the Java-based cultural collective Taring Padi will offer you a replacement shirt while yours hangs, dripping wet, on a clothes-line in a rural Indonesian kitchen recreated in the pristine gallery space of the Singapore Art Museum.

Away from its Home Fronts exhibition, you can hop over to a 48-hour insomniacs' carnival at The Arts House where, among other wacky installations and activities, you will get the chance to make your own fantasy music video.

Seni, whose name comes from the Malay word for 'art', is a contemporary, regional art showcase which aims to widen the notion of 'Asia'.

The debut event features more than 100 artists from 14 countries such as India, Indonesia, Japan, Lebanon, the Philippines and Singapore.

The majority of the works are not static paintings but video, installation or performance works.

It is also a sign of bigger things to come for visual art, which has received relatively less attention here in terms of infrastructure compared to the performing arts.

Seni is billed by organizers National Arts Council (NAC) and the National Heritage Board as a teaser for a global-scale Singapore Biennial in 2006.

While Seni cost $800,000 to organize, including the cost of flying the artists down and mounting their works, NAC chief Lee Suan Hiang says the biennial hopes to secure a budget equivalent to the $6.5 million or so needed to mount the annual Singapore Arts Festival, which focuses on the performing arts.

Meanwhile, Seni will serve to promote the country to the international art world and generate buzz among audiences here.

Mr Lee also thinks it gives the NAC and its partners the opportunity 'to build up expertise in organizing large-scale international contemporary art events'.

Or, in the words of Home Fronts curator Ahmad Mashadi, 'Seni allows us to make mistakes, to try a whole range of things which are different'.

In the case of time-based, live art event Insomnia 48, it would involve getting people to think of performance not as theater or dance but in relation to visual art.

But is Singapore simply jumping on the biennial bandwagon?

Many Asian cities such as Shanghai, New Delhi and Korea's Gwangju have visual art festivals in the form of biennials or triennials while high-profile art festivals in the West include the Venice Biennial and Documenta in Kassel, Germany.

But Mr Ahmad, a senior curator with the Singapore Art Museum, believes that audiences here should not be deprived of the experience of a biennial, and that it can encourage Singaporeans to look at themselves and be open to projections and knowledge from the outside.

In that sense, the regional Seni serves as a one-off 'bridge' event between the proposed international biennial and past national arts events such as the Singapore Art Fair (1986-93) and Nokia Singapore Art (1999 and 2001).

A national-level showcase for the visual arts will remain in the form of a new Singapore Art Show in 2005. The plan is to alternate that with the Singapore Biennial in 2006.

Seni's artistic director, sociologist Chua Beng Huat, describes all these developments as a 'learning process' -- not just for the organizers but also the public.

As he puts it, the works in Seni may be 'instantly familiar or instantly strange' to first-time audiences, who are encouraged to suspend their expectations of artwork as decorative objects.

If there is an overall thread running through the event, Professor Chua, who teaches at the National University of Singapore, thinks it is that 'art is taken out of untouchable, purpose-built spaces and niches and re-placed within the flow of mundane everyday life, invoking reflections on this life'.

Seni is on at various venues from Oct 1 to Nov 28. Visit www.senisingapore.org for more details.

Publication Date : 2004-09-30

Caption: Su-en Wong's art features her own nude body.