Singapore Art Week (SAW) returns January 11 to 19 this year, bringing a kaleidoscope of visual art showcases and experiences in various locations across Singapore.
An annual celebration of visual arts, SAW is jointly organised by the National Arts Council (NAC), Singapore Tourism Board (STB) and the Economic Development Board (EDB).
Now in its eighth edition, SAW will be welcoming the public in various spaces including galleries, museums, art precincts and unconventional spaces. Audiences can also look forward to innovative art and lifestyle events that will take place alongside key events in the visual arts calendar.
Here are some highlights of the SAW:
A work of art does not serve to illustrate. Rather, it generates new meanings, creates new associations, and sensitises our relation to the sphere of human experience that it incorporates. Disturbing Narratives reflects empathy, sensibility, imaginative richness and radically freed phantasy, in which the artists of our days are approaching the unlimited complexity of life and history.
Disturbing Narratives presents over 30 artists from Europe, Asia, Africa and North & South America who are working with completely different visual languages and media – spanning painting, drawing, photography, video, sculpture and installation.
When: January 11-19
Where: Parkview Museum
Entry: Free
Dancing Alone (Don't Leave Me)
Dancing Alone (Don’t Leave Me) by artist Susie Wong is an immersive video installation of solitary women dancing freely, evoking imagery of dance halls in the 1950s and 60s.
Referencing a line from the film, The King and I: “no woman would dance alone while a man is looking at her,” the exhibition alludes to the consumed representations of women in media that are re-enacted in the everyday. The dancers in Wong’s videos evoke both the desire to be freed from these tropes, and at the same time, to themselves consume by reinforcing them through the culturally infusive practices of a modern society. Through dance, she is both empowered and subjugated.
When: January 11-19
Where: Objectifs – Centre for Photography and Film
Entry: Free
Re-discover the cultural and historical narratives through physical and digital layers and reconnect with the stories hidden in our urban environment.
In Singapore, the Central Business District around Tanjong Pagar and Raffles Place is home to public art created by some of Singapore’s pioneer artists. Harnessing the storytelling power of augmented reality technology, AR.T Trail invites the public to immerse themselves in the stories of six public artworks in this district. This is also Singapore’s first-ever public art walking trail powered by Spark AR from Facebook.
When: January 11-19
Where: Various locations around CBD
Entry: Free
Pneuma: Of Spirituality in Contemporary Age
In this group exhibition, six artists gather to provide a multi-faceted view of an individual’s metaphysical perspective qua spiritual journey; a human effort to build a perennial ground as a basis for understanding differences and nuances. There are shapes, lines and colours in Pneuma: Of Spirituality in a Contemporary Age, that symbolises deep meanings so ancient that it resonates even if our consciousness has no awareness of it.
When: January 11-19
Where: Stamford Arts Centre
Entry: Free
State of Motion 2020: Rushes of Time
Set against the newly reopened National Archives of Singapore as one of its exhibition sites, State of Motion 2020: Rushes of Time reflects on the relations between ideas of time, bodies of memory and the moving image. From site-specific installations to live performances, the featured artworks will look into ways in which artists act as living mediums to gather and animate personal and collective histories.
Parallel to the exhibition, there will be tours, talks and an exciting film programme that explores the repositories and the possibilities of the archival.
When: January 11-19
Where: National Archives of Singapore
Entry: Free
A love letter to devotion and intimacy, an ode to togetherness, an homage to the claustrophobia of surveillance capitalism. Organised by INSTINC, DE:VOTED is an immersive mash-up of light, sound, performance and technology by seven local artists and two Japanese artists.
DE:VOTED’s sense of evolving communality will play out through programme of workshops, guided tours and space activations. Set-up, presentation and deinstallation will be dissected and opened up in a single continuous gesture over seven days.
When: January 13-19
Where: Artspace@Helutrans
Entry: Free