Performing Subjects, Performing Objects
Performance art emerged as a vital medium for art-making in Southeast Asia, in the 1990s and 2000s. Often socially-engaged and politically-inflected, performance art’s ephemeral and often abstract nature allowed artists ways of negotiating regimes of surveillance and control. This panel brings together two artists who played pivotal roles in Southeast Asian art history, and considers some of their iconic performance works and the socio-cultural contexts they navigated. In addition, the panel will consider how and why artists employ objects or installations with performative qualities, and how they continue to redefine body-based art in response to shifting circumstances.
Speakers:
Mella Jaarsma – Artist, Indonesia / Netherlands
Suzann Victor – Artist, Singapore / Australia
Moderated by:
Tan Siuli – Contributing Editor, ART SG and Independent Curator
Mella Jaarsma – Artist, Indonesia / Netherlands
Mella Jaarsma has become known for her complex costume installations and her focus on forms of cultural and racial diversity embedded within clothing, the body and food.
Mella Jaarsma (b. 1960, Emmeloord, Netherlands) studied visual art at Minerva Academy in Groningen, Netherlands from 1978 to 1984, after which she left the Netherlands for Indonesia in 1984 to study at the Art Institute of Jakarta and at the Indonesian Institute of the Arts in Yogyakarta from 1985 to 1986. Mella Jaarsma’s works have been presented widely in exhibitions and art events in Indonesia and abroad. Among her solo exhibitions are Performing Artifacts; Objects in Question, ROH, (Jakarta, 2022,) The Size of Rice, Aplus, (Kuala Lumpur 2021), Bolak Balik, Jendela Art Space (Esplanade, Singapore, 2017); The Carrier, Baik Art (Los Angeles, USA, 2016); Potong Waktu, Nadi Gallery (Jakarta, Indonesia, 2014); De meeloper / The Follower, Artoteek Den Haag, ( The Hague, The Netherlands, 2006); Asal, Etemad Gallery (Tehran, Iran, 2005).
Mella Jaarsma has also participated in different important group shows such as Biennale Videobrasil, (Sesc24, Sao Paulo, 2023) ArtJog, Jogja National Museum, (Yogyakarta, Indonesia 2023), Jogja Biennale, Jogja National Museum, Yogyakarta, 2021) The Setouchi Triennale, Ibuku
Island, (Japan, 2019), Dunia Dalam Berita, Macan Museum, (Jakarta, 2919), The Thailand Biennale, (Krabi, Thailand 2018); Sydney Biennale, Art Gallery of New South Wales, (Sydney, Australia, 2016); The Roving Eye, ARTER (Istanbul, Turkey, 2014); Suspended Histories, Museum van Loon (Amsterdam, The Netherlands, 2013); GSK Contemporary — Aware: Art Fashion Identity, the Royal Academy of Arts (London, England, 2010); Re- Addressing Identities, Katonah Museum (New York,
USA, 2009); Beyond The Dutch (Centraal Museum Utrecht, 2009), Fashion Accidentally, Museum of
Contemporary Art (MoCA Taipei) (Taipei, Taiwan, 2007)., etc. In 1988, together with Nindityo Adipurnomo, she co-founded Cemeti Art House, one of the first spaces for contemporary art in Indonesia, which to this day remains an important platform for young artists and art workers in the country and region. Mella Jaarsma lives and works in Indonesia.
Suzann Victor – Artist, Singapore / Australia
Suzann Victor’s practice prospects the contours of human sensorial experience, perception and phenomena by mining materials from the body, the elements of light and water to the science of physics, alongside engineered components and the readymade. Through performances of vulnerability, acts of collective labour, installations or public artworks, Victor emboldens the significance of sites, spaces and architecture by transforming them into immersive environments that draw awareness to the viewer’s own body as an investigative tool for apprehending the world at large.
The first female artist to represent Singapore at its inaugural showing in the 49th Venice Biennale (2001), Victor was the concept-developer of 5th Passage, one of Southeast Asia’s earliest feminist artist-initiative (1991-1996) to generate new art audiences from Singapore’s de facto community centre – the shopping mall – by tapping two resources at hand: the readymade public within the readymade public space. As the country’s first corporate-sponsored art spaces (Parkway Parade and Pacific Plaza), 5th Passage also set the precedent of reaching out to the public long before “outreach” became a mainstay of local art institutions to come.
Victor’s works have been commissioned for presentation beyond Venice in notable exhibitions including the 2nd Diriyah Biennale, 6th Havana Biennale, 2nd Asia-Pacific Triennial, 6th Gwangju Biennale, 4th Singapore Biennale, Sunshower Exhibition (National Art Center Tokyo & Mori Art Museum), Shaping Geographies: Woman | Art | Southeast Asia (Gajah Gallery), and Thermocline of Art (ZKM, Karlsruhe). Her public artworks are sited in high-profile locations including World Square, Sydney and the National Museum of Singapore.
Tan Siuli – Contributing Editor, ART SG and Independent Curator
Tan Siuli is an independent curator with over a decade of experience encompassing the research, presentation and commissioning of contemporary art from Southeast Asia. Major exhibition projects include two editions of the Singapore Biennale (2013 and 2016), inter-institutional traveling exhibitions, as well as mentoring and commissioning platforms such as the President’s Young Talents exhibition series. She has also lectured on Museum-based learning and Southeast Asian art history at institutes of higher learning in Singapore. Her recent speaking engagements include presentations on Southeast Asian contemporary art at Frieze Academy London and Bloomberg’s Brilliant Ideas series.