Open to Interpretation
The Asian Art Institutum (AAI) and Gasworks London are proud to present Open to Interpretation, a series of five short videos by five local artists.
We live in a time when social media cannot be denied. Its ubiquitous influence is shaping everything around us from fashion to food and politics.
There is no greater platform, today, for a single person to reach millions of people anywhere in the world. A whisper can be amplified to a roar audible in every corner of the world. A simple idea can develop and be realized at the other end of the world. This is the power of social media and whoever knows how to harness its power understands the world we live in.
Conceived by AAI director, Tan Boon Hui, Open to Interpretation is an invitation for artists to explore the realm of social media via YouTube videos and experiment with its potential for amplification of artistic ideas and capturing the zeitgeist.
The AAI is proud to partner with Gasworks London for this project with the curatorial participation of Wells Frey-Smith, Assistant Curator: Special Projects at the Whitechapel Gallery, London.
The five videos of Open to Interpretation can be viewed on AAI’s YouTube Channel - https://tinyurl.com/theinstitutum
Singapore Art Week 2021
22nd to 30th January 2021
Boedi Widjaja
Boedi Widjaja (b. 1975, Solo City, Indonesia) migrated to Singapore at the age of 9 due to ethnic tensions, separated from his parents. His practice draws on his own transmigrant lived experiences, researching diaspora and homelands; Indo-Asia-Pacific geopolitics; and cross-cultural hybridities. Trained as an architect and with a background in graphic design, the techniques, materials and tools of drawing have become a defining element of Widjaja’s artistic practice. This is expressed through a broad range of media, from photography and new media to architectural installations and Live Art, with an emphasis on process and bodily engagement.
Title: A tree rings, a tree sings 树龄°述铃
Artists: Boedi Widjaja
Details: Single Channel Video, 00:20:00
Description:
New findings in epigenetics suggest that we inherit ancestral memories. Could we then possibly inherit images and sounds—audiovisual signals—through DNA transmissions? In 2012, I returned to my grandfather’s hometown. Travel photos shot with my phone were subsequently re-imaged (re-imagined?) by inverting camera lenses. The soundtrack is the sonification of a hybrid DNA; genetic code—music score—of my Y-chromosome, the Chinese parasol tree (or wu tong, my grandfather’s namesake), and an encoded text. The video is generative in the tradition of Eno’s ambient music. An algorithmic composition that plays different every time, and (almost) infinitely. This 19-min slice was recorded at my computer in Jan 2021.
Chen Yanyun
Dr. Yanyun Chen (b. 1986, Singapore) is a visual artist, known for her charcoal drawings, animations and installations practice, and her works delve into the aesthetic, cultural and technological inheritances on one’s body, unravelling fictional and philosophical notions of embodiment. She researches cultural wounds, dowry traditions, hereditary scars, philosophies of nudities, and etymology. Chen graduated from the European Graduate School Philosophy, Art, and Critical Thought PhD programme in 2018, the Communications MA programme in 2014, and Nanyang Technological University School of Art Design and Media Digital Animation programme in 2009. She is the Arts Practice Coordinator for the Humanities division of Yale-NUS College in Singapore.
Title: Hindsight is 20/20
Artists: Yanyun Chen & Chia Yaim Chong
Details: Single Channel Video, 00:02:27
Description:
How does one begin to describe the inane restlessness and psychic volatility, without recourse, which was 2020? What constitutes creative production and privilege in a time when the stage is shut, and society has deemed art as no.1 non-essential during a pandemic in Singapore? What are artists to do when they are just not needed? With hindsight, visual artist Yanyun Chen and singer-songwriter Chia Yaim Chong offer a glimpse of a Singaporean artist’s life under lockdown, in the only way they know how: a new work.
Hilmi Johandi
Primarily a painter, Hilmi's recent exploration has expanded to include various media. His works are often set in the context of Singapore, where he is based, and he re-composes images from film, archival footages, and photographs into fragmented montages that hint at the social effects of rapid development. Hilmi's interest in film and the local history of Singapore has been a constant in his practice.
Title: Two minutes of island paradise (Sun set to rise) n.2
Artists: Hilmi Johandi
Details: Single Channel Video, 00:02:15
Description:
Using printouts to create stop motion animation, this work is a composition of images borrowed from tourist advertisements and travel documentary clips produced in the past. Footages are dissected into frames and superimposed into a piece to create a visual experience that highlights the constructed-ness of its representation. Hilmi Johandi works primarily with painting and explores interventions with various media to pursue ideas of image-making. As he often borrows images from archival footages and photographs, beyond the reflection of nostalgia in Hilmi’s work, is a subtle portrayal of a society that encourages the viewer to reflect on existing historical narratives.
Rizman Putra
Rizman Putra graduated with Master of Arts (Fine Arts) from Lasalle College of the Arts in 2007. He is the winner of the 2005 Japanese Chamber of Commerce & Industry Singapore Foundation Arts Award, a co-founder of the now dissolved art collective Kill Your Television, as well as the founder of the electronic outfit NADA. He is currently an Associate Artist with Cake Theatrical Productions.
Title: Smearing Impulsion
Artists: Rizman Putra
Details: Single Channel Video, 00:04:29
Description:
Smearing Impulsion is a performative drawing presentation that was pre-recorded within a span of 3 days. Specifically focusing on the notion of immediacy and ephemerality, connecting related themes that surround motion and time, body and energy, light and space, imagined and observed, demonstrating how drawing can function as a performative device.
Robert Zhao
Robert Zhao (b. 1982, Singapore) is a multi-disciplinary artist who blends reality and fiction in his works. Strongly informed by his observations and ongoing research into the natural world, Zhao adopts a practice that investigates and unravels the intertwining relationship between humans and their habitats. He lives and works in Singapore.
Title: And A Great Sign Appeared
Artists: Robert Zhao
Details: Single Channel Video, 00:04:52
Description:
On Dec 22, 2019, thousands of birds appeared in front of my home, darkening the sky and covering the open field next to a construction site. They were Asian openbill storks, birds foreign to Singapore and which have travelled a long way to be here. Their appearance was a great sign, but what of, to this day, I’m not sure.
The Asian Art Institutum (AAI) is a non-profit organisation based in Singapore. AAI's focus is the growth of Singapore art through the development of relationships with the global contemporary art community through international projects that respond to the local and South East Asian context.
Established in 1994, Gasworks is a non-profit contemporary visual art organisation working at the intersection between UK and international practices and debates. The organisation provides studios for London-based artists; commissions emerging UK-based and international artists to present their first major exhibitions in the UK. It also delivers a highly respected international residencies programme, which offers rare opportunities for international artists to research and develop new work in London. All programmes are accompanied by events and participatory workshops that engage audiences directly with artists and their work. www.gasworks.org.uk
Alessio Antoniolli is the Director of Gasworks, where he leads a programme of exhibitions, international residencies and participatory events. He is also the Director of Triangle Network, a world-wide network of visual art organisations that work together to create artists’ exchanges and to share knowledge with each other. He has lectured widely and has been part of many juries including the UK’s Turner Prize in 2019.
Wells Fray-Smith is Assistant Curator: Special Projects at the Whitechapel Gallery, London, where she is responsible for the Max Mara Art Prize for Women and is currently cocurating The London Open 2021, an open-call exhibition for artists based in London. Before that, she held similar positions Pace Gallery and the Barbican Art Gallery, as well as the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Past projects include Helen Cammock: Che si puó fare and Sense Sound Sound Sense at Whitechapel Gallery (2019), and Basquiat: Boom For Real at the Barbican Art Gallery (2017) at the Barbican Art Gallery. Wells has published catalogue essays on artists Fabienne Verdier (2020) and Prabhavathi Meppayil (2021).
