Singaporean work in Guggenheim show

A travelling exhibition of Asian art staged by the famous Guggenheim Museum in New York and curated by a Singaporean curator will make its next stop in Singapore.

No Country: Contemporary Art For South And South-east Asia, part of the Guggenheim UBS MAP Global Art Initiative which opened in New York on Feb 22 last year, is the first exhibition of the initiative.

Backed by the banking and financial services group UBS, the programme intends to highlight regions under-represented in the international art scene.

It travelled to the Asia Society in Hong Kong from last October to February and will run from May 10 to July 20 at the Centre for Contemporary Arts in Gillman Barracks.

In an e-mail interview, curator June Yap told Life! she had travelled for three months to countries including Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, Myanmar, Vietnam, Cambodia, the Philippines, Bangladesh and India to gather art for the show.

The 39-year-old picked the works of what are regarded as some of the most compelling and innovative voices in the region and South Asia.

Yap said No Country wants to reflect upon "exchanges and relationships within and between South and South-east Asian nation-states" as well as the pressures and effects of globalisation.

Veteran artist Tang Da Wu represents Singapore in the exhibition. His 2012 installation Our Children, made of steel, glass and milk, is among 19 paintings, sculptures, photographs, videos and mixed-media works by 16 artists and collectives from 11 countries. Our Children, a comment on interactions between nature and culture, is a minimalist work presented in the form of a Chinese altar.

The Asian show is a landmark event as it seeks to broaden the reach of the Guggenheim, which boasts one of the world's top art collections.

Its New York collection has more than 6,800 artworks, with only 12 from South and South-east Asia and none from Singapore. The works in the show will be acquired by the institution for its permanent collection.

Professor Ute Meta Bauer, 55, founding director of the Centre for Contemporary Art, says the centre "is committed to research and discourse" and No Country brings "a complex perspective on contemporary artistic production that addresses the diversity of South and South-east Asia".

There are artworks by several regional heavyweights, including multi-disciplinary Indian artist Shilpa Gupta, Thailand's Navin Rawanchaikul, who represented his country at the Venice Biennale in 2011, and Cambodian installation artist Sopheap Pich, who uses the humble rattan to make powerful sculptures that comment on Cambodian society.

Also included is Bangladesh artist Tayeba Begum Lipi. The artist, who made a quiet Venice Biennale debut in 2011, continues her exploration of the issues of womanhood and femininity through her 2012 installation Lovebed, made of razor blades. The blades are meant to reference violence as well as examine the hidden threats of domesticity.

Lovebed was commissioned by the Samdani Art Foundation for the first edition of the Dhaka Art Summit in 2012.

Mrs Nadia Samdani, 32, who founded the Samdani Art Foundation with her businessman and art collector husband Rajeeb, says the inclusion of this work in the No Country exhibition "marks the beginning of a new journey for the Bangladeshi contemporary art scene. This is a very significant survey of how contemporary art scenes are developing in Asia".

View it

NO COUNTRY: CONTEMPORARY ART FOR SOUTH AND SOUTH-EAST ASIA
Where: Centre for Contemporary Arts, Block 43 Malan Road, Gillman Barracks
When: May 10 to July 20, noon to 7pm (Tuesdays to Sundays), noon to 9pm (Fridays). Closed on Mondays.
Admission: Free
Info: guggenheim.org/MAP

Get a copy of The Straits Times or go to straitstimes.com for more stories.