THIS year’s Singapore Art Week introduced a string of firsts during the annual event’s nine-day run that concluded on January 30. Among the fresh offerings of what is tagged as “the pinnacle of Singapore’s visual arts scene” was the SAW Art Symposium, a series of curated talks and panel discussions that featured cultural leaders and policy-makers.
Conducted in person at Victoria Theatre in Singapore and live-streamed simultaneously online, the seven panels discussed topics relevant to the changing arts ecosystem in light of the prevailing global pandemic, as well as its implications for the future.
“One takeaway I had was that the pandemic and travel restrictions have forced galleries, museums, art fairs and collectors to accelerate their adoption of social media and new software into their SOPs,” said Chong Huai Seng, cofounder of The Culture Story and art collector, who spoke on the panel titled “How Sustainable is Art Going Digital?”
Meanwhile, according to Takashi Kudo, communications director of international art collective teamLab, the conversations gave industry stakeholders new creative hints and inspiration to create art, even amid these challenging times.
“It is important to seek out and affirm an idealistic part of humanity, and present an idea of the future; that’s why we try to create art,” said Kudo, who spoke on the panel “The Future of Digital Technology in Art.”
While the discussions tackled the role of digital technology in the art landscape, SAW 2021 in itself embodied the blurring lines between technology and art. For the first time in its history, SAW held its inaugural hybrid edition. The event’s dynamic lineup of art and interventions took over bus stops, car parks and the digital realm.
SAW 2021 showcased over 100 programs presented by more than 300 independent artists and curators, celebrating the resurgence of Singapore’s vibrant arts community following the country’s gradual lifting of Covid-19 restrictions. This year’s audiences were treated to various showcases that had artists experimenting and breaking creative boundaries.
These included a public art exhibition along the bus 175 route cocurated by Amelia Abdullahsani and Merryn Trevethan, titled Bus.Stop.Art, as well as Singapore’s first mall-wide art activation at Creative Unions curated by Neighborhood and presented by Funan, which brought together Singaporean artists and retail brands in a series of collaborations.
SAW 2021 also leveraged newer technologies such as augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR) to introduce visual art to more audiences at home and outside of Singapore. The fourth IMPART Collectors’ Show: Leap of Faith, for example, took online audiences into the homes of private collectors around the region.
While digital technology played a vital role in this year’s festivities, the physical offerings of SAW still allowed audiences to experience art in-person despite the pandemic. Maybe we read too much into things presented the use of found objects by artist Berny Tan, while the inaugural Singapore Ceramics Now 2021 by Jason Lim and SEED Art Space displayed the largest survey of contemporary ceramic art practices in Singapore.
SAW also continued to be a stage for international collaborations, reflecting Singapore’s openness and diversity as a regional arts hub. The project S.E.A. Focus, which has grown to become one of the highly-regarded art platforms in Southeast Asia, was able to bring the best representation of galleries and artworks to Tanjong Pagar Distripark despite travel restrictions.
Similarly, global travel restrictions notwithstanding, over 40 international artists from the UK, US, Australia, Indonesia, Taiwan, Malaysia and beyond worked with Singaporean artists across the digital space to generate cross-collaborative programs. These included headliner projects such as hybrid exhibition Otherworlds: non/digital realities, produced in collaboration with Hong Kong-based Altermodernists, as well as Open to Interpretation by The Asian Art Institutum, organized in collaboration with Gasworks in London.
SAW 2021 was a joint initiative by the National Arts Council, the Singapore Tourism Board and the Singapore Economic Development Board. According to NAC Chief Executive Officer Rosa Daniel, the rich diversity of artistic programming, private-public partnerships and activation of spaces across Singapore in SAW 2021 is the result of a cohesive visual arts community that stepped up amid the significant challenges arising from the Covid situation in 2020.
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