Expanded Practices: New Ways of Creating and Presenting the Moving Image
This panel brings together practitioners with expansive and alternative approaches to conceiving, producing, commissioning and collecting video art and artists films. Artists Su Hui-Yu (Taiwan) and Yeo Siew Hua (Singapore) will speak about their respective practices, which are inter-disciplinary and deeply collaborative. Aside from exhibiting in museums and gallery settings, they also present their work in film festivals, performance festivals and theatrical productions.
Barcelona-based writer Han Nefkens is the founder of the non-profit Han Nefkens Foundation, which funds and supports video art commissions in collaboration with international art institutions. The unique way in which the foundation operates allows for artists not only to produce new work but also to have that work shown at numerous art institutions world-wide.
Speakers
Su Hui-Yu – Artist, Taipei
Han Nefkens – Collector and Founder of Han Nefkens Foundation, Barcelona
Yeo Siew Hua – Artist, Singapore
Moderated by:
Sam I-shan – ART SG FILM Curator, Singapore
Su Hui-Yu – Artist, Taipei
Su Hui-Yu’s work explores the relationship between collective memory, ideology and transgression in the recent histories of Taiwan and East Asia. His ‘re-shooting’ projects draw on archival sources and examine the past to imagine alternative trajectories. He has exhibited extensively in international art institutions and festivals. He lives and works in Taiwan.
Han Nefkens – Collector and Founder of Han Nefkens Foundation, Barcelona
Han Nefkens is a writer, art collector, and art patron based in Barcelona. What started in 2001 with the purchase of a video installation by Pipilotti Rist has grown into a collection of contemporary art consisting of photographs, videos, installations and paintings that is lent as “promised gifts” to several museums in the Netherlands.
In 2006, Nefkens established the Han Nefkens Foundation that supports emerging and mid-career video artists by financing production and providing them with an international platform through its collaboration with more than thirty art institutions worldwide including the Mori Art Museum in Tokyo, the Singapore Art Museum, M+ in Hong Kong, MUAC in Mexico City, the Bass in Miami, MACBA, the Tàpies Foundation and the Miro Foundation in Barcelona.
While doing this the Foundation strives for a personal and long-term relationship with the people and institutions it works with. Nefkens reflections on art and memory, inspired by objects and encounters in his daily life can be found at: https://www.hannefkens.com/
Yeo Siew Hua – Artist, Singapore
Yeo Siew Hua’s A LAND IMAGINED (2018) won the Golden Leopard at the 71st Locarno Film Festival. It is Singapore’s entry to the Academy Awards (Oscars) 2020 and is internationally distributed on NETFLIX. The film also won Best Original Screenplay at the 56th Golden Horse Awards 2019. The film received top awards at various international film festivals, including the 29th Singapore International Film Festival 2018, where he was also honoured the Leslie Ho Asian Film Talent Award in recognition of his contribution to the development of cinema in Asia. He is a member of the Asia Pacific Screen Academy and a recipient of the APSA Young Cinema Award. He wrote and directed the expanded cinema THE ONCE AND FUTURE (2020), which was scored live by members of the Berlin Philharmoic.
He is a founding member of the 13 Little Pictures film collective in Singapore, which produced his debut film IN THE HOUSE OF STRAW (2009) and also his feature documentary THE OBS: A SINGAPORE STORY (2014). He was awarded the National Arts Council of Singapore’s Young Artist Award in 2021.
Sam I-shan, ART SG FILM Curator, Singapore
Sam I-shan is an independent curator focusing on moving image, photography, and art and politics. She programmes for film festivals, specialising in artist films and video, and Southeast Asian cinema, working with the Singapore International Film Festival, Art SG and Videoex Zurich.
She was previously curator at National Gallery Singapore, Singapore Art Museum and Esplanade Visual Arts. Exhibitions include Nowhere Here (SIPF), Sim Chi Yin: One Day We’ll Understand (Rencontres d’Arles, France), Cao Fei, Georgette Chen: At Home in the World (NGS), and Afterimage: Contemporary Photography in Southeast Asia (SAM). At SAM, she headed moving image initiatives and co-programmed the annual Southeast Asian Film Festival. She lives and works in Singapore and Cambodia.