Shahmen Suku
Singapore
 

Building upon his long-standing engagement with performative storytelling, Shahmen Suku will spend his residency researching Failures, Deaths, and the ceremonies that surround them in his family histories.

Shahmen Suku

4 September 2023 - 31 January 2024

Building upon his long-standing engagement with performative storytelling, Shahmen Suku will spend his residency researching Failures, Deaths, and the ceremonies that surround them in his family histories. Having previously explored different aspects of the rich Tamil cultural traditions of his maternal lineage via the alter ego Radha, the artist now intends to let go of his persona and directly confront the conflicting and multipolar narratives of his family history which include economic struggles, heated arguments, health issues, and prolonged disagreements. The artist’s in-depth journey into the complex and fraught interpersonal relations that have shaped his emotional upbringing will entail the collection of oral histories from family members, fieldtrips to temples and cemeteries, and archival research into his family’s records, recipes, photographs, and films.

This episode features a conversation between Artist-in-Residence Shahmen Suku and Singaporean artist Moses Tan. With disparate practices, the two find synergy as they uncover shared ground in their drawn-out path in becoming a visual artist. They discuss how Shahmen’s experience growing up as a minority in Singapore shaped his practice that employs humour and double-meanings to confront difficult truths. Shahmen also ponders upon the position he occupies in straddling the lines between performance within theatre, performativity, and performance within the visual arts.

 

 

 

 

Shahmen Suku is a performance artist who works between Sydney and Canberra, Australia. Drawing from his personal experience of growing up in a matriarchal Tamil household in Singapore, Shahmen’s body of work explores multifaceted perspectives on migration, displacement, race, culture, colonisation, and gender identity. The personal, poignant, and irreverent narratives generated around these themes are conveyed through performances, installations, and video works and they are often voiced by his alter ego, Radha.

Moses Tan is a Singapore-based artist whose work explores histories that intersect with queer theory and politics while looking at melancholia and shame as points of departure. Working with sculpture, drawing, video and installation, his interest lies in the use of subtlety and codes in the articulation of narratives. He currently programs and runs starch.sg, an artist-run space in Singapore.

Contributors: Shahmen Suku, Moses Tan
Editor: Magdalena Magiera
Programme Manager: Nadia Amalina
Sound Engineer: Ashwin Menon
Intro & Outro Music: Zachary Chan
Cover Image & Design: Arabelle Zhuang, Kristine Tan

Contributors
Shahmen Suku
Shahmen Suku
Artist-in-Residence
Australia, Singapore

Shahmen Suku (b.1987, Singapore) is a performance artist who works between Sydney and Canberra, Australia. Drawing from his personal experience of growing up in a matriarchal Tamil household in Singapore, Shahmen’s body of work explore multifaceted perspectives on migration, displacement, race, culture, colonisation, and gender identity. The personal, poignant, and irreverent narratives generated around these themes are conveyed through performances, installations, and video works and they are often voiced by his alter ego, Radha. His recent projects include 5,6.7.8, Penrith Regional Gallery, Australia (2022); Oil Room, Club 4A, 4A Centre for Contemporary Arts, Sydney, Australia (2022); Queer Ecologies – Rivus, Biennale of Sydney, Sydney, Australia (2022); Skin Deep, Queer Contemporary, National Art School, Sydney, Australia (2021). From 2019 to 2022, he was part of Australian ABC TV’s live music television programme The Set. In 2022, Shahmen received the Incubator – NSW Theatre (Emerging) Fellowship with Griffin Theatre Company.