Tan Kai Syng

Tan Kai Syng’s residency explores global issues through extended conversations with Singapore-based colleagues. In the first part of her residency, she developed the participatory project PICTURING HAPPINESS? with three other artists and two scientists from the School of Computer Science, Nanyang Technological University. Using commercially-available devices that read brain waves, the project explored the parameters that define our sense of well-being, critiquing the market-driven framing of happiness as a motionless, thought-free state of mind. This was the beginning of a cross-disciplinary investigation that the artist is currently pursuing together with several psychiatrists in London. For the second part of the residency, Tan will also examine notions of gender. Working together with pioneer feminist artist Amanda Heng and two other women arts professionals, they will convene a public programme to discuss how gender affects collaborative artistic practices in Singapore and beyond.