A&M Small Room
The Faraway Nearby
Jevon Chandra (b. 1991)
Comprising sound, installation, and print works, ‘The Faraway Nearby’ by Jevon Chandra is a prelude to an upcoming body of research on the impact of religion on physical and social bodies. In preparation, the artist begins by locating his emotional point of departure: his experiences growing up in churches across Indonesia and Singapore. What awaits rediscovery is an encoded but already-lived map of interests, impulses, and fears.
Artworks
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Other Things
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Songs of Companionship #1 and #2
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The Side of Heaven
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Homebound
The exhibition’s title takes after a book by Rebecca Solnit, which came from a letter written by artist Georgia O’Keeffe as she migrated from New York to New Mexico. As in the writings, the exhibition exudes a latent sense of movement across physical, emotional, and ideological spaces, much like the attempt to stay true to any belief. Far from feeling grounded, one may expect to find their conclusions and arrivals constantly deferred, so imminent yet so beyond reach, the distance felt yet so shapeless.
Jevon Chandra, detail of ‘Other Things’, 2022. Image courtesy of the artist.
Jevon Chandra, detail of ‘Other Things’, 2022. Image courtesy of the artist.
Other Things, 2022
pencil and cut-outs on silk paper, candle, 4-channel sound
paper cut-out: 50 x 37cm; installation dimensions variable
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A highlight work in Jevon’s AMSR is ‘Other Things’ (2022), which combines personal reflections with soundscape. The artist writes thoughts on the humble material of silk paper and then cuts the words out. The gesture augments the seemingly-assertive act of printing and speaking, manifesting the gaps present therein. The work alludes to Martin Luther’s pasting of his printed ‘Ninety- five Theses’ on the door of the Castle Church, an act of theological challenge against the Roman Catholic Church that sparked the Protestant Reformation. Canonically remembered as an act of bold revolution, it was in truth done amidst great private and societal turmoil: from the Black plague tearing across Europe, to Martin Luther’s perpetual fears of divine judgment. The impulse behind ‘Other Things’ is to dial down an assertive gesture into a gentler, more perishable form, as an expression of still speaking, but more tentatively and carefully
Songs of Companionship #1 and #2, 2019
laser-cut acrylic, servo motor, die-cut digital print Bristol paper flaps, Arduino, code
19.1 x 14.2 x 14.4cm each
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‘Songs of Companionships #1 and #2’ (2019) captures two improvised gestures in a loop. In each capsule, one hand “leads” and the other “follows”; two hands take turns to hold the other. First presented in full at Esplanade Flipside Festival 2019, ‘Songs of Companionship’ is an audiovisual installation about loving and communicating love. It reflects the relationships, dependencies, and engagements with those dear to us – the emotions certain and tentative, gestures given and withheld, and gambles won and lost. How do we speak affection? Amidst newer pieces in the exhibition, the work is made present herein for its emotional resonance: for the fundamental assertion that an act of love is an act of faith.
Homebound, 2022
line etching, surface print, embossing on Zerkall white paper
paper size 50 x 70cm; image size 17 x 30cm
Jevon Chandra (b. 1991) is a transdisciplinary artist and designer. He is an active member of Singapore-based socially-engaged art collective Brack, and is working to conceive his practice as a long-term endeavour sustained by collaboration, decency, and patience. Through time and context-bound installations and interventions, his works estimate the interplays between doubt and belief in acts of care, love, and faith.
As a lead/co-lead artist, his projects have been presented at platforms such as Singapore International Festival of Arts (2021), Singapore Art Week (2021), Fujinoyama Biennale (Japan, 2020), Incheon Art Platform (South Korea, 2019), Esplanade Flipside Festival (2019), Understanding Risk Conference 2019 (Chiang Mai), The Substation (2018), and OXO Tower Wharf (London, 2017).
