Narrowing its focus

Singapore's top contemporary-art event opened last Friday for invited guests and on Saturday to the public with the community art project Mandi Bunga, a flower-bath ritual.
Art lovers from all walks of life have been taking in more than 100 works by 82 artists and artist collectives. Response has been mostly positive, with visitors applauding the ease of access to works by using a central location and presenting fresh creations from the region.
Unlike the previous edition, where Old Kallang Airport was the main venue, this year’s Biennale is centred mostly in Bras Basah precinct, with easy access between key venues such as the Singapore Art Museum and the National Museum.
The focus this year is also distinctly Southeast Asian, unlike the three previ?ous editions, which had a more interna?tional nature. And there is a big push in community arts projects – there are 10 this year – and they are clearly a draw.
At the Singapore Art Museum, several visitors lingered around local artist Ahmad Abu Bakar’s wooden boat instal?lation “Telok Blangah”, which bears glass bottles with messages from prison inmates.
At the Peranakan Museum yesterday, visitors said they were deeply moved by a mixed-media installation by another Singapore artist, Shirley Soh. She got inmates at Changi Women’s Prison to use their sewing skills to illustrate their con?cerns about their future on pieces of linen.
The embroidered works are inspired by kuvarica – the traditional Serbian wall hangings typically crafted by rural women. The inmates expressed their dreams and hopes with words and various represen?tational forms such as birds and sunrise to evoke the idea of freedom.
“I have never seen anything like this before,” commented warehouse assistant Steven Tay, 48, viewing the show with his eight-year-old son. “This is also life.”
“We don’t often get to hear these sto?ries,” added lecturer Shirley Tan, visiting with her young daughter Jana. “These are invisible faces. I’m glad something like this has been included in a key event like the Singapore Biennale. It has the power to move.”
Other works that drew crowds includ?ed Australian artists Ken+Julia Yonetani’s “Crystal Palace”, made of 100,000 glass beads, and Japanese art collective teamLab’s futuristic digital installation that features animated figures responding to the presence of viewers with light, sound and movement.
Several people said they had flown to Singapore specifically to catch the show, which continues until February 16. Among them was Manila-based gallery owner Isa Lorenzo, 39, who called the biennale “a great effort”.
“It is inevitable that, given the nature of the beast and the scale of an event of this nature, not all works will be equal, but this biennale shows us that there is enough art in the region, that we have a different narrative and it can be celebrated.”
Adrienne Aguilan, 63, who works for an art foundation in Manila, lauded it for presenting art with “an excellent region?al perspective”.
Singapore-based French collector Guillaume Levy-Lambert, who has 200 works in the MaGMA collection, which he jointly owns with his partner, thanked the biennale team “for creating a joyful expe?rience full of delightful discoveries”.
The show also got the thumbs-up from New York curator Jason Andrew, who was in town for the opening of an exhibition he curated – “To Be a Lady” at the Sundaram Tagore Gallery.
“Overall the work seemed closely tied to the human experience – introspective and sensitive – far from the irony and cynicism that prevails in art world hubs such as New York and London,” said Andrew, 44.
He said that, although some works he saw bordered on naivete, it was that very quality that was the biennale’s “greatest strength”. “More telling is the seemingly unbridled commitment of the biennale’s organisers and its collaborators to make this a signature Southeast Asia visual-arts event.”

 MAKE PLANS TO SEE IT
 The Singapore Biennale runs until February 16 at various venues, including the Singapore Art Museum, SAM at 8Q, the National Museum, the Peranakan Museum, Fort Canning Park, the National Library, Singapore Management University, Waterloo Centre and Our Museum@Taman Jurong.
Admission is S$10 (Bt251). It’s free for children six and under, senior citizens and local students, and $5 for foreign students and seniors.
Find out more at www.SingaporeBiennale.org.