The exhibition marks the culmination of the first cycle of SEA AiR—Studio Residencies for Southeast Asian Artists in the European Union (SEA AiR).
Events Official Opening in the presence of H.E. Iwona Piórko, EU Ambassador to Singapore and the artists 10 January 2023, 4.00 – 5.00pm Public preview: 4.00 – 7.00pm
Creative Trajectories Artist talk by Hoo Fan Chon, Citra Sasmita, and Vuth Lyno 11 January 2023, 6.00 – 7.30pm
SEA AIR – STUDIO RESIDENCIES
FOR SOUTHEAST ASIAN ARTISTS IN THE EU
CYCLE 1
Hoo Fan Chon, Citra Sasmita, Vuth Lyno: New Works
11 January - 5 February 2023
NTU Centre for Contemporary Art Singapore and the European Union Delegation to Singapore are pleased to present the exhibition Hoo Fan Chon, Citra Sasmita, Vuth Lyno: New Works. The exhibition marks the culmination of the first cycle of SEA AiR—Studio Residencies for Southeast Asian Artists in the European Union (SEA AiR). As participating artists in the inaugural cycle of SEA AiR, Hoo Fan Chon (Malaysia), Citra Sasmita (Indonesia), and Vuth Lyno (Cambodia) have each been awarded a three-month-long residency at an art institution in Europe as well as funding for the creation of artworks.
Stemming out of a year-long engagement, Hoo Fan Chon, Citra Sasmita, Vuth Lyno: New Works is the outcome of a multifaceted process made of journeys and institutional collaborations, fieldwork and encounters, research and artmaking.
In the first half of 2022, amidst unrelenting surges of the pandemic and the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the artists took off from their home countries to conduct three-month-long residencies: Hoo Fan Chon at HIAP – Helsinki International Artist Programme (Finland); Citra Sasmita at WIELS (Brussels, Belgium); and Vuth Lyno at Villa Arson (Nice, France). The artworks featured in the exhibition Hoo Fan Chon, Citra Sasmita, Vuth Lyno: New Works have been created by the artists in the months following their residencies, a much-needed time for critical reflection and material experimentation that allowed them to develop their research findings and creative inspiration into full-fledged artworks. Ranging from installation and video to sculpture and painting, some of these works also mark these artists’ first attempts at embracing new mediums and materials: 3D animation techniques for Hoo Fan Chon, video for Citra Sasmita, and paper for Vuth Lyno. Most importantly, they bear witness to how the artists’ interests in the cosmetics of food, cultural contaminations, decolonial practices, the empowerment of women, and the resilience of marginalised communities, have evolved over the last year.
The exhibition is curated by Dr Anna Lovecchio, Assistant Director (Programmes), and NTU CCA Singapore. The project leader of SEA AiR is Ute Meta Bauer Founding Director, NTU CCA Singapore, and Professor, School of Art, Design and Media, Nanyang Technological University.
In residence at HIAP—Helsinki International Artist Programme (Finland) from late February to late May, Hoo Fan Chon soon became fascinated by the salmon pink hue that adorns the facades of many buildings across Finland and its neighbouring countries. This chromatic cue tied in with the artist’s ongoing interest in issues of taste, class, and fish culture—the son of a fisherman, fish-based imagery and foodscapes are often the subject of his work. Hoo Fan Chon’s erratic investigation, imbued with a distinctive sense of irony, around the cosmetic processing of farmed salmon and the social status of salmon consumption as a signifier of class and wealth in Chinese culture resulted in a multimedia installation. How to turn your siakap into salmon is a video work, inspired by tutorials commonly found on YouTube, that illustrates DIY techniques to colour affordable fish in order to simulate a salmon-eating experience. The artist’s first experiment with 3D animation, the installation I have never seen a swimming salmon in my life projects swimming salmon cuts onto an aquarium with a voiceover about the plights that threaten the survival of salmons. Finnish landscape painting series is a series of painterly interventions on found paintings where Chinese blessings and images of the proverbial “carp leaping over the dragon’s gate” are inscribed onto landscape paintings that the artist sourced from thrift shops around Helsinki.
The artistic practice of Citra Sasmita revisits ancient Balinese mythologies and retools traditional artistic techniques and materials to address misconceptions that persist in contemporary society, especially with regard to the status of women. The residency at WIELS (Brussels, Belgium) from April to June enabled her to encounter and research the legacy of her ancestors held in European museum collections built during the colonial era by often dubious and unethical means. The installation Timur Merah Project VIII: Pilgrim, How You Journey revolves around the figure of I Dewa Agung Istri Kanya, a queen of the Klungkung kingdom in Bali, who fiercely opposed the Dutch colonisers in the 19th century. Ruled out from most historical accounts, the history of this charismatic woman leader is revived in Citra’s powerful imagery and interspersed with scenes from the Bhima Swarga epic depicting the hero’s journey between Heaven and Hell. Painted on traditional Kamasan canvases, the paintings are mounted on antique pillars arranged in an eight-pointed star configuration that references ancient Balinese cosmologies. The installation also comprises a double-channel video, the artist’s first video work, in which a singer performs the poem Prelambang Bhasa Wewatekan (The Coded Language of Symbols), written by the Queen herself. Underneath the tantric symbolism of the poem secretly lurk the Queen’s memoir, anti-Dutch propaganda messages, and military strategies.
Pursuing intersecting interests in architecture, the politics of space, and place-making practices, during the residency at Villa Arson (Nice, France) from March to May, Vuth Lyno had the opportunity to travel several times to the French capital and research the architectural remnants of the 1931 International Colonial Exposition which took place in the Bois de Vincennes, a forest park in Eastern Paris. He discovered that the former Cameroon Pavilion was turned into a Buddhist temple in the late 1970s. Following its conversion into a place of worship, the building and the surrounding greenery have come to play an important role in the spiritual, cultural, and social life of the Cambodian community in France. A migrant community’s appropriation of a site previously used to display colonial (mis)representations of those very communities led the artist to develop a broader reflection on the role of urban parks as sites of refuge wherein minorities and marginalised groups (sex workers, queer communities, the homeless, etc.) can find emancipation and enact their agency. The resulting installation Vibrating Park-Forest ensues from a comparative study of heterogenous uses and grassroots practices that unfold in specific parks in Paris, Phnom Penh, and Singapore. Vibrating Park-Forest is the artist’s first installation made of paper, a material he began to experiment with during his residency at Villa Arson.
Images
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Citra Sasmita, Timur Merah Project VIII: Pilgrim, How You Journey, 2022, double-channel video, sound, 22 minutes. Courtesy the artist.
Hoo Fan Chon, How to turn your siakap into salmon, 2022, single-channel video, full HD, colour, sound, 15 min 36 sec. Courtesy the artist.
Vuth Lyno, Vibrating Park-Forest, 2022, preparatory drawing, graphite on paper. Courtesy the artist.
Citra Sasmita, Timur Merah Project VIII: Pilgrim, How You Journey, 2022, installation, acrylic on traditional Kamasan canvas, antique carved wooden pillars. Courtesy the artist.
Dimensions variable
Hoo Fan Chon, Finnish landscape painting series, 2022, oil or acrylic interventions on 13 found paintings, framed, dimensions variable. Courtesy the artist.
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Admin and Operations
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Nayang Technological University
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Press Officer
European Union Delegation to Singapore
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Contributors
Citra Sasmita
Artist-in-Residence
Indonesia
With a background in literature and physics, Citra Sasmita is a self-taught painter who turned to the visual arts after working as an illustrator at a local newspaper in Bali. By unravelling myths and misconceptions that persist in Balinese culture, her work imagines secular mythologies for a post-patriarchal future. She is deeply invested in the social empowerment of women and in questioning gender hierarchies and normative constructs. Her work is regularly exhibited within Indonesia and has been presented internationally at the Kathmandu Triennale, Nepal (2021–2022); and ParaSite Hong Kong (2020). In 2020, she received for the UOB Museum MACAN Children’s Art Space Commission and she is the Gold Award Winner of the UOB Painting of The Year 2017.
Hoo Fan Chon
Artist-in-Residence
Malaysia
Hoo Fan Chon is a visual artist whose practice explores taste and foodscapes as cultural and social constructs. His research-driven projects examine how value systems fluctuate as people move from one culture to another. Reframing mundane aspects of everyday life with irony and wry humour, his multimedia works address notion of cultural authenticity and they set in motion the frictions and the overlaps produced by the migration of cultural symbols between different sociocultural contexts. Hoo recently received a solo exhibition at The Back Room, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia (2021) and he has participated in a number of group shows in Asia. Also active as a curator and a grassroot cultural producer, he is involved with Run Amok Gallery, an art gallery and alternative space in George Town he co-founded in 2013.
Vuth Lyno
Artist-in-Residence
Cambodia
Vuth Lyno is an artist, curator, and educator who is interested in space, cultural history, and the production of knowledge through social relations. Drawing on a wide range of materials such as interviews, artifacts, and newly made objects, he creates spatial configurations that weave together personal stories and collective bodies of knowledge. Participatory and experimental in nature, his artistic and curatorial approach is rooted in communal learning and aims to engage a multiplicity of voices in the production of meaning. He is a member of Stiev Selapak, a collective which founded and co-runs Sa Sa Art Projects in Phnom Penh, a long-term initiative committed to the development of the contemporary visual arts landscape in Cambodia. His work has been presented at several group exhibitions and institutions such as the Bangkok Art and Culture Centre, Thailand (2020) and the 9th Asia Pacific Triennial, Brisbane, Australia (2019), amongst others.
WIELS Contemporary Art Centre
Institutional Partner
Belgium
WIELS is the main centre for contemporary art in Europe’s capital city. An international laboratory for innovation and creative practices that aims to enrich the debate, open up new perspectives and stimulate the senses, enhancing cultural mobility and interactions with creators and authors from other cultures and geographies. As a space dedicated to the transmission of knowledge, support and professionalisation of emerging and less-visible artists since its inception in 2007, WIELS occupies a central position in the art scene from Brussels and Europe and puts its know-how at the service of artistic invention and innovation. For the second decade, after having established global connectivity, WIELS engages in new efforts to connect artists and intellectuals from east and South-east Asia, Africa, and Latin America.
HIAP – Helsinki International Artist Programme
Institutional Partner
Finland
HIAP – Helsinki International Artist Programme is an international artist residency organisation which was established in 1998. The HIAP residency programme offers time and space for developing new work in dialogue with the local art scene. The goal is to support experimental, cross-disciplinary art practices and to actively contribute to topical debates within and around the context of art.
Villa Arson
Institutional Partner
France
Villa Arson is a highly regarded public institution of the French ministry of culture and a member of Université Côte d’Azur located in Nice on an exceptional site overlooking the Bay of Angels. Its architectural ensemble includes an 18th century Italian-style villa set in a Mediterraneangarden and modern constructions built in the 1960s by French architect Michel Marot that have been labeled «Remarkable contemporary architecture. Villa Arson combines several complementary functions in favor of contemporary creation: teaching, research, experimentation, production, dissemination, promotion and support. The Villa Arson school of art, contemporary art center, artists’ residency and specialised library form a unique ecosystem dedicated to supporting young generations of artists towards professional practices, presenting original artistic visions and facilitating critical exchange with an international perspective. Villa Arson welcomes residents for its teaching and research activities and within the framework of tailored partnerships for artistic production and research.
