Annjee Teo
Ground Up (2021)
Soil on Rice PaperGround Up is an intuitive experiment exploring the land we stand on - a photographic amalgamation of soil and light. Diluted soil is fed into paper prepared with specific chemicals; after some time and exposure, an analytical image of the land we stand on emerges. This process is often used in permaculture to examine soil quality and to seek out impurities.
In presenting these chromatograms, the artist invites the viewer to reexamine the relationship that they have with this island - by examining the literal composition that makes up our island. A ‘map’ as to what physically exists in our dirt.
Through examining the acuity and visual frequencies that emerge from these chromatograms, a subtle mindfulness and profundity is observed. It is the artist’s hope that these images add context and root us to the stories that we were born into. After all, these biodynamic cycles of transformation - pulses, streaks, rings and all - contribute to a larger narrative that extends beyond just us.
Annjee Teo (b. 1999) is an interdisciplinary artist, arts producer and paint-maker based in Singapore. Drawing inspiration from the various ethnographies and histories in Southeast Asia, her research is focused on enigmatic stories and the interdisciplinary currents involved in art collaboration and critique. This often manifests in using unorthodox materials and metaphors as a form of narrative storytelling. Inspired by the whimsicality and relatability found in abstract artistic influences and concepts, she hopes to use fine art as an accessible force for social change that appeals to people from all walks of life.
Annjee has participated in group shows at Gillman Barracks, Yale-NUS College and LASALLE College of the Arts, among others. Most recently, she completed a community arts residency at *SCAPE, and is currently involved in another pilot residency under the National Arts Council called ABxBA. She also enjoys exploring the potential of the sciences involved in artistic processes and the delicate chemistry involved in creating paint. She owns and operates Forage & Forge Paints, an ongoing research project specializing in artisanal handmade watercolor paint.
Azri Alwi
Di Mana Pulau Kamu?
Digital Illustrations, 2021
In Through the Eyes of Beholders I, I interviewed a community of scuba divers to investigate how immersive experiences of nature can shape one’s worldviews and value systems. Diving deeper into the subject revealed the profound significance of upbringing and growing up in conscious engagement with the environment, which broadened the scope of my research beyond diving as an activity.
My parents’ generation grew up in a Singapore before land reclamation. Back then, Beach Road was by the beach and the East Coast Parkway was not yet built over the thriving reefs that lined our southern coast. The local landscape resembled its neighbors’, its seamless flow across borders a testament to geologic history. Naturally, my parents’ experiences of such terrains became the stories I grew up with.
My parents’ generation grew up in a Singapore before land reclamation. Back then, Beach Road was by the beach and the East Coast Parkway was not yet built over the thriving reefs that lined our southern coast. The local landscape resembled its neighbors’, its seamless flow across borders a testament to geologic history. Naturally, my parents’ experiences of such terrains became the stories I grew up with.
Di Mana Pulau Kamu? is an illustrated poem that draws from the dissonance between past and present experiences of our island state. It explores the notion of natural heritage as a lived relationship with nature over generations, considers the implications of severing this inheritance, and asks what we can offer our children in its place.
Azri is intent on questioning conventions in the contemporary art world, particularly via contemplating nature. Often drawing from the ‘past’, such as principles in Chinese landscape painting, Islamic theology, and traditional Malay design, he aims to channel a sacred and timeless worldview of human-nature relationships through his work.
Azri uses prose and visual media to open up spaces of contemplation. Each invites the audience to pause, breathe and meditate on the place of nature in their lived experience and vice versa. His triptych Through the Eyes of Beholders explored these aesthetic engagements as a means of healing the soul, approaching metaphysical questions from communal, personal and historical angles respectively.
His work reflects an urgency to address the increasing disconnect from the natural world in hyper urban spaces, presenting traditional principles and attitudes as viable alternatives to the status quo.
His work reflects an urgency to address the increasing disconnect from the natural world in hyper urban spaces, presenting traditional principles and attitudes as viable alternatives to the status quo.
Lizzie Wee
No One is an Island (2021)
MP4 Video, 05:27, 2021 No One is an Island (2021) is a video poem conceived through my research on the history of the southern islands of Singapore; when faced with the concept of non-travel in our city-state, many locals turned to domestic travel, to give ourselves the sense that we were, in fact, travelling or moving beyond the sense of stasis we felt with the pandemic restrictions. However, the histories of the lands we now see as functioning tourist spots or landfills, were once inhabited. While the world shifted around them, the islands I’m concerned with have had one constant attribute in their inability to move.
Despite this, they have changed drastically over the years. I write this visual poem in an imagined voice of the land, documenting the journey which they have taken, while unmoved. It is through personifying these histories and stories that I aim to draw parallels between our current predicament of being unable to travel and these bodies of land. I hope to shift the viewer’s perspective from the negatives of being stagnant in Singapore, to a positive.
By looking closer at the connections we forge with both the people around us and the land that we live upon, beyond just looking with a historical and geographical lens, but rather with an intimate and personal gaze, we might find that our wanderlust might be stimulated not by a shift in place, but a shift in perspective.
By looking closer at the connections we forge with both the people around us and the land that we live upon, beyond just looking with a historical and geographical lens, but rather with an intimate and personal gaze, we might find that our wanderlust might be stimulated not by a shift in place, but a shift in perspective.
Lizzie Wee is a Singaporean multidisciplinary artist, designer, illustrator, art director and video editor. She received her BFA from New York University, and an MA Fine Arts from the Goldsmiths programme at LASALLE College of the Arts.
Her present practice-based research investigates notions of identity and belonging; through an examination of archetypal female roles found in Southeast Asian pop culture and visual media. Her works are expressed through video, performance, and writing for performance. Apart from her artistic practice, Wee has worked with Sotheby's Hong Kong, and Kitchen Hoarder, a woman-run production team focused on lifestyle and food culture.
Sarah Lin
(Sarah Ninjawhee)
Spirit Map
Photography, digitized ink illustrations, photoshopDimensions variable, 2021
In Spirit Map, Sarah Ninjawhee presents a memory-scape of her childhood upon visiting the apartment complex she grew up in and had not visited in a decade. The saturated and saccharine colors in Spirit Map combined with the obfuscated words suggest a feeling of confrontation and uneasiness of these memories.
Ghosts and vivid recollections flooded her psyche as she trespassed the property and wandered about, seeing spectres of scenes and feeling like an intruder to her own recollections. Strangely, it seemed as though her past consciousness had moved on from the place, leaving only shells of ectoplasm in their departures. What was left to confront was her own perspective of memory and herself.
Sarah Ninjawhee is a multimedia artist and trance musician based in Singapore. She is inspired by human phenomenology and is interested in the intersection between autonomy, power and femininity. She studied illustration in Rhode Island school of Design and fine arts at LASALLE College of the arts.
Sarah has won awards such as LASALLE'S Student Excellence Award (2019 & 2021), the LASALLE Scholarship (2017-2021) and the Winston Oh Travelogue Award (2019). She has participated in programmes such as the Kyoto University of Art and Design X LASALLE exchange programme (2018), Chanel X Harper’s Bazaar Singapore-Paris Immersion Programme (2019), Rediscover Telok Ayer x Urban Redevelopment Authority (2020). She has shown most recently at I_S_L_A_N_D_S (Singapore), TOMO Gallery (Kyoto)
Smiha Kapoor
@_milk_n_7_almonds_ is an online presentation developed as an antidote to the physical distances we’ve come to suffer during the pandemic. It makes use of the personal and the familial to harvest exchanges embodied in love and care-giving to heal through our current isolations.
By recalling the deeply familiar through everyday items, objects and rituals of caring, and wrapping them up in care-packages to hand-deliver to people across Singapore, this collaborative performance ponders on the multitude of meanings the care-package takes on in relation to the personal, cultural, historic, creative and everyday identities of its participants. It traces itself across the intimate individualities of the people it touches, and finally meets us digitally where the newly elaborated meanings to its items are archived together.
@_milk_n_7_almonds_
Dimensions - Variable, Online presentation | Instagram - @_milk_n_7_almonds_, 2021
Medium - Collaborative Participatory Performance
Materials - Care-Package; Milk, Curd, Ghee, Paneer, Almonds, Tea Leaves, Honey, Jaggery, Mishri, Batasha, Dried Chillies, Saffron, Black Pepper, Green Cardamom, Clove, Fennel Seeds, Chat Masala, Turmeric Powder, Cinnamon Powder, Boondi, Oil Lamp, Mauli Thread, Bamboo Plate, Cellophane, Hawker Paper
Materials - Care-Package; Milk, Curd, Ghee, Paneer, Almonds, Tea Leaves, Honey, Jaggery, Mishri, Batasha, Dried Chillies, Saffron, Black Pepper, Green Cardamom, Clove, Fennel Seeds, Chat Masala, Turmeric Powder, Cinnamon Powder, Boondi, Oil Lamp, Mauli Thread, Bamboo Plate, Cellophane, Hawker Paper
Collaborators
Akai, Alisha Cherian, Asviinii Maria, Divyam Raghunath, Ila, Jennifer Teo, Jessie Lim, Jireh Koh, Joeve Lio, Jyoshitaa Gopinath, Madeline Tan, Manju Mohanadas, Manka Bajaj, Mengju Lin, Murali M, Nur Cosina Wong, Sarah Leroy, Saraswati Satyananda, Shibani Gaikwad, Soo Pei Chia, Tanvi Kothary, Veronyka Lau, Victoria Chen
Akai, Alisha Cherian, Asviinii Maria, Divyam Raghunath, Ila, Jennifer Teo, Jessie Lim, Jireh Koh, Joeve Lio, Jyoshitaa Gopinath, Madeline Tan, Manju Mohanadas, Manka Bajaj, Mengju Lin, Murali M, Nur Cosina Wong, Sarah Leroy, Saraswati Satyananda, Shibani Gaikwad, Soo Pei Chia, Tanvi Kothary, Veronyka Lau, Victoria Chen
Smiha Kapoor (b. 1997) is an Indian artist and facilitator currently based in Singapore. Her approach to art-making is performance-centric through which she extends the personal into realms of drawing, installation and image-based media.
Her interest lies in investigating notions of the non-dual and she often employs tracing as a conceptual strategy to weave connections across various planes of presumed separations. She has presented her works in India, Germany and Singapore and has developed performances for institutions like National Gallery Singapore and NUS Museum in collaboration with artists like Jimmy Ong. She graduated with a Bachelors in Fine Art (Hons) from LASALLE College Of The Arts in 2021.