Projects
17 Volcanoes
17 Volcanoes is a series of exhibitions based on "Tourism and Cultural Heritage: A Case Study on the Explorer Franz Junghuhn," a multi-year research project funded by the Future Cities Laboratory in Singapore (2015–2017). It springs from the expedition archives of German-Dutch explorer Franz Wilhelm Junghuhn in Java between 1836 and 1848. The project research team tracked Junghuhn's itinerary to seventeen of his favourite volcanoes, gathering methods and narratives from contemporary "expeditions" that provided critical and artistic perspectives on the volcanoes' ecology and their impact on culture, history, environment, and design. The current iteration set in the Benilde Center for Campus Exhibitions re-examines how volcanoes are designed as experiences through the materials from the research project, while conversant with embedded practices and generational knowledge of the volcano's forces and rhythms with human belief systems and political structures.
NUS Museum, Singapore
17 Volcanoes
Featuring works and appearances by
Elizabeth Bronfen • Adrianne Joergensen • Franz Wilhelm Junghuhn • Alex Lehnerer • Armin Linke and Giulia Bruno • Sebastian Linsin • Clive Oppenheimer • Bas Princen • Deni Sugandi • U5 • Philip Ursprung • Nadia Wagner • Wermke/Leinkauf
Benilde Center for Campus Exhibitions, Manila
17 Volcanoes Ikaw Ang Pinakamaganda
Works and appearances by Lav Diaz, U5, Philip Ursprung, Adrianne Wilson
Art in rehabilitation from the Cold War in Southeast Asia
Double Vision, 2016
Double Vision was a major archival and video exhibition at the NUS Museum featuring experimental films and video art exploring how the Cold War affected Southeast Asia and the cinematic histories linked to American histories in the Philippines and Vietnam. Works by David Griggs, Gym Lumbera, Roxlee, Miko Revereza, Angel Velasco Shaw, Shireen Seno, Stephanie Syjuco, and Kidlat Tahimik, were featured alongside declassified documents and annotations on the period of the 50s – 90s.
Unsettled Assignments, 2017
Instigated by Double Vision, Unsettled Assignments was an exhibition and workshop by Lyno Vuth and me for the Singapore International Festival of the Arts 2017. This project examines the networks of unsettled South-South relations that emerged from postcolonial conflicts and peacekeeping interventions in Southeast Asia. Children were born in Cambodia in 1993 to African fathers serving in the United Nations peacekeeping troops. After "the fall of Saigon" in 1975, South Vietnamese asylum seekers sought refuge at the Philippine First Asylum Camp, where they were screened, validated and sent to other refugee processing centres in the Philippines, before finally leaving for the U.S. or other countries in the West. Through an installation of archival material and a workshop, Sidd Perez and Vuth Lyno read the residues left by these foreign military bases and camptowns in the region and trace the lives that were made peripatetic by this unresolved history of conflict and peacekeeping.
An ongoing register of art in peace and rehabilitation, 2019
Part of my residency at the Headlands Centre for the Arts, this presentation consolidates and indexes the works, experiences, and aspirations of artists from Headlands' previous residency cohorts. The personal legacies we carry are also motivated by larger transnational moments. What are the ways that we rehabilitate our memories, narratives and actions alongside national reconciliation projects? While at Headlands, I question the function of art in recovering from war and other imperialistic operations that have been significant to artists' personal legacies. As a curator, I bring together oblique connections between past Headlands artists' works, documents and anecdotes from previous bases such as Fort Barry, Angel Island, Alcatraz, and Treasure Island. As a gesture, I begin with keywords and images that shape the relationships among memory, stress, and curiosity about the history of peacekeeping and the rehabilitation of personal cross-overs and global wars.
prep-room
Situating the university museum as a site of encounters, the NUS Museum accommodated what was considered a "third mode" of presentation in its curatorial practices. From 2016–2026, as the prep-room's curator, I dedicated it towards testing curatorial methods that can collaborate with research-centred creative practices.
In its originary stages, the prep-room exposes the making of research and art practices as they crystallise into exhibitions, formalise as collection lots and offer pathways of invigorating pedagogy with university students as non-academic, creative approaches press on their classroom research. The prep-room synergises discursive relationships between artworks, the archival and the artefactual. These aspects are considered within the frames of facilitation, acting alongside permanent collection exhibitions and temporary curatorial projects.
Select prep-room projects include Buaya: The Making of a Non-Myth with natural history conservator Kate Pocklington, After Ballads with artist Fyerool Darma, Crater Studios with artist collective U5 and Adrianne Wilson, Of Place and a Paradox with Patani Art Space, Yang Tidak Lupa with Young Museum Professional Trainee Nurul Kaiyisah, Intimate Landscapes with recently graduated students from the Department of Architecture and the hull and the rig: Nusantara boats and Charles Lim.
Rediscovering Forgotten Thai Masters of Photography
A project of Manit Sriwanichpoom, Rediscovering Forgotten Thai Masters of Photography began with solo retrospectives of each photographer's body of work at Manit's Kathmandu Gallery. Surveys of these masters of photography were featured at the Bangkok University Gallery (2015), later at the NUS Museum, Singapore (2018), and at ILHAM Gallery, Kuala Lumpur (2019). The latter exhibitions were launched and co-curated by Manit and me.
In an archival endeavour to find historic photographers in Thailand, Manit finds master works in monasteries, provincial and private photo studios, broadsheets and popular entertainment channels. Among these, the project gathers significant inventories of Buddhadasa Bhiku (1906–1993), Liang Ewe (1911–1992), S.H. Lim (1930), Saengjun Limlohakul (1924–1997), Pornsak Sakdaenprai (1938–2021), 'Rong Wong-savun (1932–2009), and M.L. Toy Xoomsai (1906–1961).