Paradise Lost

Ute Meta Bauer is a Professor at the School of Art, Design and Media, Nanyang Technological University Singapore (NTU). She is currently the Acting Director and Principal Research Fellow at the NTU Centre for Contemporary Art Singapore (NTU CCA Singapore); and is the Chair of the Masters in Museum Studies and Curatorial Practices (MA MSCP) programme. Having served as the Founding Director of NTU CCA Singapore for over a decade, her work as educator and curator over the past years has focused on Climates. Habitats. Environments. At the Centre, she curated and co-curated The Oceanic (2017/2018), Trees of Life. Knowledge in Material (2018), and The Posthuman City (2020). In 2022, she served as curator for the Singapore Pavilion at the 59th Biennale di Venezia, featuring artist Shubigi Rao. Her recent large scale projects include the 17th Istanbul Biennial (2022), co-curated alongside David Teh and Amar Kanwar, and the artistic direction of the Diriyah Contemporary Art Biennale 2024. She is a Trustee of the Art Foundation TBA21 and a member of the Governing Council of n.b.k. Berlin. Bauer was recently conferred an Honorary Doctorate of Art and Design by Aalto University School of Arts, Design and Architecture, Helsinki, Finland.

Zarina Bhimji’s work spans a range of media – from installations to photography, from film to sound. Often in her work, Bhimji engages with her family story. Of Indian descent, born in Uganda, Bhimji and her family left the country in the wake of Idi Amin’s expulsion of the South Asians community. Bringing aesthetic to the fore, Bhimji’s approach to colonial history is defined by a strong visual language that resists simplifications and predictable interpretations of the work.

Bhimji’s work has been shown extensively both in the UK and abroad and her solo shows include De Appel Arts Centre (2012-2013), Whitechapel Gallery, London (2012; The New Gallery, Walsall (2012), Kunstmuseum Bern, Bern (2012), Hamburger Bahnhof, Berlin (2009), Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago (2009). Bhimji’s work has also been shown at He Disappeared Into Complete Silence, De Hallen Museum, Haarlem (2011), ARS11 – Africa in Kouvola, Kouvola (2011), Göteburg International Biennal, Göteburg (2011); 29th Bienal de São Paulo, São Paulo, Capturing Time, Kadist Art Foundation, Paris (2009), Zones of Contact, Biennale of Sydney (2006). Her first film, Out of Blue was commissioned, produced by and presented in 2002 at documenta 11, Kassel.  Zarina Bhimji was nominated for the Turner Prize in 2007, received a DAAD award in 2002 and was a recipient of the Paul Hamlyn Visual Arts Award in 1999.

Fiona Tan’s work range from photographs to drawings, from digital installations to theatrically scaled projections. Tan’s evocative works are powerful investigations of identity and belonging in a world shaped by global culture. Much of her work expresses a long-standing interest in the documentary image, both personal and public, and the role of memory, time and place in the construction of identity. The artist’s explorations on issues of post-colonialism and displacement originate in her own biography straddling East and West. Born in Indonesia, to a Chinese-Indonesian father and an Australian mother, she was raised in Australia and moved to the Netherlands in her late teens where she studied at Rijksakademie, Amsterdam. Still, her work often suggests that displacement is part of everyone’s life and everyone’s identity is in a constant flux.

Tan’s work has been shown in numerous solo and group exhibitions. She participated in various biennales including São Paulo Biennial, São Paulo (2010), Göteborg Biennial, Göteborg (2009), New Orleans Biennial, New Orleans (2008), Biennale of Sydney, Sydney (2006), Berlin Biennale (2001) and she also took part in documenta 11, Kassel (2002). In 2009, she represented The Netherlands at the Venice Biennale’s for the Dutch Pavilion. Tan’s recent solo exhibitions include: Inventory, Maxxi, Rome (2013), Disorient, Gallery of Modern Art, Glasgow (2012), Point of Departure, Andalusian Centre of Contemporary Art, Sevilla (2012), Rise and Fall, a touring solo exhibition at Aargauer Kunsthaus, Aarau; The Vancouver Art Gallery, Vancouver (2010 – 2011).

Trinh T. Minh-ha is Professor of Gender & Women’s Studies and of Rhetoric at the University of California, Berkeley, and an award-winning artist and filmmaker. She grew up in South Vietnam during the Vietnam War and pursued her education at the National Conservatory of Music and Theater in Ho Chi Minh City. In 1970, she migrated to the United States where she continued her studies in music composition, ethnomusicology, and French literature at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. She embarked on a career as an educator and has taught in diverse disciplines which brought her to the National Conservatory of Music in Dakar, Senegal, where she shot her first film, Reassemblage. Trinh’s cinematic oeuvre has been featured in numerous exhibitions and film festivals. She has participated in biennales across the globe including Documenta11, Kassel (2002), and most recently at Manifesta 13, Marseille (2020). A prolific writer, she has authored nine books. She is the author of several books including Lovecidal: Walking with the Disappeared (2016), D-Passage: The Digital Way (2013), and Elsewhere, Within Here: Immigration, Refugeeism and the Boundary Event (2011). Her film Surname Viet Given Name Nam (1989) was presented as an installation within NTU CCA Singapore’s inaugural exhibition Paradise Lost (2014).