AIR Special Event: Open Studio with Beatrice Glow

Full press release here: https://www.yale-nus.edu.sg/newsroom/yale-nus-college-artist-in-residences-open-studio-and-podcast-series/

Open studio with Beatrice Glow 

Multidisciplinary artist-researcher Beatrice Glow, who is currently in residence at Yale-NUS, held an open studio event at NTU Centre for Contemporary Art Singapore (CCA) Residences Studios in Gillman Barracks from 1 to 2 May 2021. This event is the culmination of a five-month artist residency for Glow, who showed works-in-progress to the public and shared the creative process behind the development of her artworks. Deputy President and Provost of LASALLE College of the Arts and member of the Yale-NUS AIR selection committee and Venka Purushothaman said, “The Yale-NUS Artist-in-Residence programme is a unique curricular feature enabling the critical engagement with artists on contemporary issues. More than introducing students to artistic practices, this residency provides students an opportunity to experience meaning-making as it occurs. In this regard, Beatrice Glow’s ‘Smoke Trails’, which carries viewers into a more just future, is a project for audiences to participate in making sense of their worlds.”

While in Singapore, Glow has been researching oceanic, diasporic and trade circulations in the region, exploring decorative arts and diverse cultural heritages, exchanging with local cultural practitioners, connecting with students and alumni, while altogether deepening her understanding of regenerative just futures as being rooted in relational and archipelagic thinking. This process has enriched the development of ‘Smoke Trails’, an ongoing project referring to a fictionalised potential future, set in the 2060s and centred around the pseudo auction of a private collection belonging to a mysterious ‘Empire of Smoke (EoS 10^15)’ quadrillionaire family, whose vast riches are underpinned by involvements in dispossession, enslavement and displacement. This fictional ‘Empire of Smoke’ family’s history reflects historical realities of 17th century Spice Wars, military innovations, tobacco plantations, and the industrial revolution. Through virtual reality world-building, 3D printed sculptures, textiles and a mock auction catalogue, Glow satirically delves into the aesthetics of violence in the age of extractivism through hauntingly manicured luxury goods.