Art Takes Over at Singapore Art Week 2024

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The arts season 2024 kicks off in Singapore with the 12th edition of the Singapore Art Week.

Alongside the second edition of the fair ART SG, which brings together over 100 international galleries, including some of the most important ones of the contemporary scene (from the 19th to the 21st of January), as well as the Sea Focus off fair, the city-state is hosting over 150 events for an Art Week titled Art Takes Over to be discovered from the 19th to the 28th January.

 

This year’s programme will take place across various venues and neighborhoods, featuring a wide range of exciting events, including light installations, performance art, tours and trails, physical exhibitions, and more. 

 

Apichatpong Weerasethakul, On Blue (2022). Single-channel video. 16 minutes 16 seconds. Courtesy Shanghart.

 

Among the many exhibition highlights is Translations: Afro-Asian Poetics, at the Institutum, which explores the connections between Asian and African diasporas, featuring artists such as Zanele Muholi, Sonia Boyce, Apichatpong Weerasethakul, and Do Ho Sun.

 

Installation view, Tropical: Stories from Southeast Asia and Latin America, National Gallery Singapore, 2023. Image credit: National Gallery Singapore

 

Among the island’s main art institutions, the National Gallery Singapore will present Tropical: Stories from Southeast Asia and Latin America, which traces formal connections and ideological affinities between artists from these regions from the 1890s to the 1980s.

 

The Singapore Art Week will also highlight local talent, with Heman Chong's Meditations on Shadow Libraries at the Creative Workshop & Gallery and Boedi Widjaja's Immortal Words at Black Box.

 

Heman Chong, Georgette Chen / 64 Butterfly Avenue / Singapore 13 / 2024.01, 2024..© Heman Chong. Photo courtesy of the artist and STPI – Creative Workshop & Gallery, Singapore.

 

 

Other noteworthy exhibitions include Self and Beyond, a group exhibition by Ay Tjoe Christine, Rina Banerjee, and Maria Farrar at Ota Fine Arts Singapore, the acclaimed Burmese artist Htein Lin’s exhibition Reincarceration at Richard Koh Fine Art, and Jeremy Sharma’s body of work displayed at the Haridas Contemporary. 

 

Htein Lin’s exhibition "Reincarceration". Courtesy Richard Koh Fine Art.

 

The line-up also includes an iconic exhibition showcasing works from 20th-century Italian Modern painters, such as Afro, Balla, Boetti, Bonalumi, Castellani, de Chirico, Dorazio, Fontana, Morandi, Santomaso, Rotella, and Vedova. Additionally, the Mandarin Oriental Singapore venue will host a collaborative auction of Modern and Contemporary art with 33 Auction and New Art Est-Ouest Auction.

 


Cover image: Film still of Boedi Widjaja in Path. 13, Quaver Cipher (2023)