Trees of Life — Knowledge in Material

Manish Nai concentrates on the material qualities of the various substances he utilises in his work. His interest is in the discovery of abstract forms through the physical manipulation of matter, and the new life assumed by cast-offs when transformed from objects of use to objects of art. Using the colour indigo (indigo dye), itself loaded with a multitude of representations and associations, this opens up the visual form to subjectivities in the interpretation of the medium throughout time. Nai’s work was included in A beast, a god, and a line, curated by Cosmin Costinas, which debuted during the Dhaka Art Summit 2018 and subsequently travelled to Para Site, Hong Kong (2018). In 2017, the Fondation Fernet Branca in St. Louis, France, presented a comprehensive exhibition of the artist’s paintings, murals, sculptures, and photographs. The exhibition will travel to the Het Noordbrabants Museum in The Netherlands. Other group exhibitions include Asymmetrical Objects, Dr Bhau Daji Lad Museum, Mumbai (2018); the Kochi-Muziris Biennale (2014); and the Shanghai Biennale (2012). He has newly completed an 18-metre-long sculpture as a permanent installation in Mumbai’s Bandra-Kurla Complex. His works are on view at the Sculpture Park at Madhavendra Palace, Rajasthan, India (2017–18), and at the Smart Museum of Art in Chicago as part of its permanent collection.

Phi Phi Oanh’s work is informed by her inquiry into lacquer as a material combined with her studies of the Vietnamese lacquer painting (sơn mài) tradition. Drawing from the hybrid nature of her personal history, Oanh constructs pictorial and evocative installations that reconfigure culturally-specific signs and symbols, creating familiar yet distinctive experiential spaces. In 2004 she was awarded a Fulbright Scholarship to study traditional Tranh Sơn Mài (Vietnamese lacquer painting) in Hanoi, which has since become a key medium in her practice. She has had solo exhibitions at L’Espace, Alliance Française in Hanoi; Artcore in Los Angeles; Art League in Houston; as well as El Palacio Nacional de la Cultura in Managua. In 2016, she was commissioned to create Pro Se, a work for the National Gallery Singapore and also showed her monumental Specula in the Singapore Biennale (2013).

Liang Shaoji’s practice intersects science and nature, biology and bio-ecology, weaving and sculpture, and installation and performance. He has been working with silkworms for almost three decades, using the life process of these insects as a medium. Liang graduated from the Zhejiang Academy of Fine Arts (now renamed China Academy of Fine Arts, Hangzhou) in 1965 and studied at the university’s Varbanov Institute of Tapestry. Now working in Tiantai, Zhejiang Province, his works are filled with a sense of meditation, philosophy, and poetry, while illustrating the inherent beauty of silk. Selected exhibitions include Cloud Above Cloud, Museum of China Academy of Art, Hangzhou (2016); What About the Art?, Contemporary Art from China, Al Riwaq, Doha (2016); Liang Shaoji: Back to Origin, ShanghART Gallery, Shanghai (2014); Art of Change, Hayward Gallery, London (2012); Liang Shaoji, Prince Claus Fund, Amsterdam (2009); among others. He was awarded the Prince Claus Award in 2009 and the Chinese Contemporary Art Award (CCAA) in 2002. In September 2018, Liang will have a solo exhibition at M Woods, Beijing.

Vivian Xu’s practice focuses on the exploration and intersection of electronic and bio media. While creating new forms of machine logic, life, and sensory systems, Xu explores the possibilities of designing a series of hybrid bio-machines that are capable of generating self-organised silk structures that combine the silkworms’ natural production process with automated computational systems of production. She is the co-founder of Dogma Labs, a cross-disciplinary laboratory based in Shanghai, dedicated to integrating design, research, education, and production with the areas of computation, biology, and digital fabrication. Xu holds an MFA in Design and Technology from Parsons the New School for Design, New York (2013) and is currently a Global Pre-Doctoral Fellow at New York University Shanghai. Xu has exhibited and lectured at various institutions around the world, including the National Art Museum of China, Beijing; Central Academy of China, Beijing; Chronus Art Center, Shanghai; Rockbund Art Museum, Shanghai; Art Laboratory Berlin; SymbioticA, the University of Western Australia; and China Academy of Art, Hangzhou.

Laura Miotto is Associate Professor at the School of Art, Design and Media (ADM) at Nanyang Technological University, and co-chair of the MA programme in Museum Studies and Curatorial Practices at ADM. She is also Design Director of GSM Project in Singapore, an international firm specialised in exhibition design originating from Montréal, Canada. With 20 years of experience in the design field, both as a creative director and an architectural designer, Miotto has worked on exhibitions focusing on heritage interpretation and sensorial design strategies in the context of museums, thematic galleries, and public spaces

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.