AIR contributed to the larger mission of National University of Singapore through superior research shown in creative outputs including peer-reviewed publications, local and international exhibitions, academic conference presentations, exhibition curation and keynote lectures; excellence in teaching in the classroom, studio and extra-curricular settings; and service evidenced in community engagement such as public workshops, alumni studio visits, online talks with non-profit organizations, local site visits and institutional collaborations with social impact.
“My experience was profoundly enriching and fruitful. Through our interactions, artists offered me excellent career advice in the arts and supported my endeavours. Their artist talk also revealed to me how deeply passionate they were in understanding ecology from multi-disciplinary perspectives. The artists-in-residence contributed significantly to my development as a student, aspiring art practitioner and researcher.”
—Alexis Chen (Class of 2022)
Selection committee member
Lead AIR student associate
January-May 2021 – Beatrice Glow
The multimedia installation Smoke Trails (work in progress) project scrutinizes questionable wealth provenance and the development of the Capitalocene, our present geological epoch defined by the irrevocable impact capitalism and extractivism have on planetary health. These artworks are created using VR-generated videos, holograms, 3D prints, and olfactory art to portray the Empire of Smoke (EoS 10^15), a fictional quadrillionaire family. Many of the objects are inspired by stories of trade and migration between Asia and the Americas as well as art histories and collections that the artist learned about in Singapore.
August-Dec 2020 – Sai (aka Chen Sai Hua Kuan)
“Da Gu” (大姑) is a 3-channel video installation exploring the cultural locality of sites and places through the life of a Chinese opera singer, who is also the artist’s aunt. The artwork is titled “Da Gu” (大姑) – meaning “aunt” in Hanyu Pinyin – following the artist’s term of endearment for his ancestor who continues to practice opera singing in Singapore today. Adopting a documentary style along with the artist’s creative perspectives, the film unpacks complex notions of Chinese opera within overseas Hokkien migrations in Southeast Asia’s cultural past while seeking to reclaim overlooked pieces of history.
January-July 2020 – Andrew Yang and Christa Donner
Andrew Yang and Christa Donner’s multimedia works are based on the theme of ‘gardens’ in Singapore, as a way to explore relationships between humans and their environment. Donner stated their aims started from the rich history of “Chinese scholars’ gardens, community gardens, kitchen gardens and the landscaping of everyday life,” while Yang invited the public to consider relationships “of ecology to the body, of the psychological to the physical, the organic to the inorganic, and the complex relationships between what we call cultural, and what we call natural.” In the context of the unprecedented COVID-19 pandemic, Yang believes artists are “reimagining what kind of world we might live in. The coronavirus raises crucial questions about what it means to live together with, and live apart from, other people and other species alike.”
