Issue 15 - Pdf Ctrl+P - CTRL+P: a journal of contemporary art

Pape’s rare Ttéia I, C , comprising of translucent blocks of curtained light in a pitch dark
room won the artist a special mention under the Re-making Worlds prize category, and
is an exquisite visual treat. Displaced quotidian matter and events otherwise make up
the material of works such as Tamara Gricic’s life rafts, floating outside the Arsenale to
its own soundtrack, or Sara Ramo’s video of a series of little events unfolding against a
non-descript red brick wall.
At times, works seemed too directly illustrative of Making Worlds, or too literal;
Pascale Marthine Tayou’s Human Being, a hybrid re-creation of a small African village,
is one example. Anawana Haloba’s street advertising kiosk, which addresses the double
standards of G8 foreign aid policies and free trade agreements, comes across as an ambiguous
crossover between a DIY project and make-shift recycling centre. In contrast,
Gonkar Gyatso’s The Shambala in Modern Times, a re-presentation of traditional Thangka
paintings using “cutesy” stickers and icons of popular culture, combines visual innovation
with subtle, yet effective social-political commentary.
Paul Chan’s captivating Sade for Sade’s Sake in the Arsenale revives the ancient
theatre of rhythmic shadow-play in his invocation of the Marquis de Sade’s writing.
This concept is elsewhere reiterated, albeit to a different effect, in Hans Peter Feldman’s
mesmerizing Shadow Play in The Palazzo at the Giardini. On the overall, the placement,
pairings and juxtaposition of works across both the Arsenale and Giardini establishes
relatively neat symmetries and there is some satisfaction to be derived from such curatorial
coherence, even if this transpires into a bland presentation.
National Pavilions
Artists’ showcases from participating countries proved, as usual, to be the mainstay
of opening day discussions. Setting the stage for Miwa Yanagi’s darkly ambivalent and
uncanny Windswept Women: The Old Girl’s Troupe, an unreservedly hysterical affront to
the proverbial, libidinally-driven “old boys club,” is a black, carnivalesque tent shrouding
the Japan Pavilion. Inside the tent, giant-sized black-and-white photographs of monstrous
looking women with twisted bodies shriek and stomp against what appears to be primitive-futuristic
landscape. A miniature version of the black tent sits in a corner, and one
is invited to stoop and peer in to watch a video of this nomadic tribe, outcasts performing
their private rituals. Compared to the highly color-saturated, futuristic fantasy of Yanagi’s
perfectly manicured and uniformed Elevator Girls from the mid-90s, “pretty” is clearly not
the point here. A surreal but memorable installation tethering on the bizarre, Windswept
Women plunges into the fictional re-creation of society and power hierarchies, extending
also the theatrical macabre of Yanagi’s Fairy Tale series, an inversion of stories such as
Snow White and Cinderella.
Presentations from Taiwan, Singapore and Thailand return perennially, and inescapably
so, to current affairs on tourism, immigration and identity. The Thai Pavilion’s
mock tourism company made a rather sketchy and unconvincing impression compared
to the delicate yet gravitatious presentation by Nipan Oranniwesna and Amrit Chusuwan
in 2007. Works in the Taiwan Pavilion, on the other hand, compellingly confront issues
regarding the nation’s status in relation to China, housing conditions, immigration processes
and the interplay of ideological stances against a backdrop of neo-liberalist globalization.
Communicating such concerns through personalized expressions and individual
narratives, the works provide a timely and pertinent investigation into the possibilities
of cross-regional interactions or ‘dialogism,’ as curator Chang Fang-wei cites. Foreign
Affairs not only sparks further consideration of the collisions and confluences of intraregional
and inter-continental movement, the presentation also demonstrates the modes
of artistic exchange deriving from such conversation.
Through an excavation of local cinematic history, Ming Wong’s Life of Imitation
at the Singapore Pavilion attempts to unpack the singularity of officialised narratives on
multi-culturalism while also referring to unspoken yet still persistent cultural stereotypes
and stigmatisms. The photographs of demolished theatres, Wong Han Ming’s archive
of old cinema tickets and the canvases painted by the last surviving billboard painter in
Singapore, Neo Chon Teck, succeed in evoking a recognisable sense of 50s-60s nostalgia.
16 Ctrl+P September 2009