Platform Projects 2020 Curatorial Award Recipients
By Of Limits Collective

Over the years, we have republished parts of long-form writing, from catalogue essays to book chapters. This practice is now formalised as part of our ‘Excerpts’ series. To read other writings from the series, click here.

As the world plunged into global chaos, many pre-existing socio-political fault lines have been brought to the fore. The pandemic and its consequent reverberating effects are but the triggers that have magnified the limits of our lives we had conveniently ignored. From social inequalities and discriminatory sentiments to the fundamental self-care of our psyche, the momentary hiatus has allowed us to reconsider these values.

‘Of Limits’ (2021), exhibition installation view at Stamford Arts Centre, Singapore. Image courtesy of Of Limits Collective.

On the phenomenological level, either individually or through shared experiences, we face some form of a limit, when we encounter death, suffering, anxiety, or freedom of choice in which the “human mind confronts the restrictions and pathological narrowness of its existing forms, and allows itself to abandon the securities of its limitedness, and so to enter new realm of self-consciousness¹.” The German psychopathologist and existential philosopher, Karl Jaspers’ concept on “limit” or “boundary situation”’² is fitting as a framework in thinking about the unsettling vicissitudes brought about by the pandemic that have affected our personal, interpersonal, and social conditions.

Within these three layers, the ‘Of Limits’ (2021) exhibition presents eleven artworks by six artists from Southeast Asia that question the lines we draw consciously and subconsciously. Faced with escalating tensions and disorientations, these artists attempt to re-examine our basic concepts of borders, and hereafter examine our current state of liminality as the pandemic continues to unfold. Through recontextualising the Jaspersian limits of our ongoing crisis, one may think of boundaries quite literally as the distance between individuals, but may also consider those as invisible limits within our psyche or lines that keep disenfranchised groups on the fringe.

During the pandemic, the local and international media have highlighted stark disparities in living conditions between the privileged and marginalised. Kelly Limerick’s (b. 1991, Singapore) ‘Brother’ (2021) highlights how migrant workers have been seen as the “other” in Singapore. The term “brother” evokes familiarity or endearment, yet it can equally be used to address a stranger.

Kelly Limerick, ‘Brother’, 2021, knitted nylon yarn, acrylic paint, 450 x 50 cm, video, 8'33. Image courtesy of the artist. Filmography by Eugene Lim Ming Zheng, Sunder S/O Nagayah, Jazlyn Song, Sherelle Lim.

Against a freshly-knit textile, Limerick dips her hand in dark paint, staining the clean woven fabric with the word "Brother" in a gesture both invasive and counterintuitive. She then proceeds to unravel the yarn, and reknits it from a square to an elongated form, rendering the word illegible and its identity erased. Yet the paint marks remain woven into the very fabric of our society, reflecting the dissociation between the local community and the migrant worker “brothers”.

Using yarn, video, installation and performance, Limerick’s process and performativity not only mirror the migrant workers’ repetitive labour, but also hint at the extensive amount of effort required to include them into our society. “The main point of this work was the process,” explains Limerick. “In going through this process to experience the menial, repetitive nature of labour, I attempt to understand the mindsets of migrant workers who, day in day out, work on the same tasks repeatedly towards an indistinct goal they might not even have an image of³.” Through constructing, deconstructing and reconstructing, the transient nature of the artwork also speaks to the state of ambiguity that they experienced during the lockdown.

Okui Lala, 'As If, Home with Mostafa Kamal', 2015, video, 6'26". Image courtesy of the artist.

Along the same vein, Okui Lala’s ‘As If, Home with Mostafa Kamal’ (2015) draws our attention to boundary situations that these communities face by addressing the complexities of translation, identities and belonging. Lala, who is also known as Chew Win Chen (b. 1991, Malaysia) is known for her critical artistic practice with a socially engaging front that includes transitory communities from Bangladesh and Myanmar. The idea of translation is at the core of her methodology. She looks at how languages speak of a person’s roots and rootedness. In the video, Kamal starts off by explaining eloquently in Malay how he had quickly learned the language from the migrant workers he works with. Speaking the local tongue in this case is integral to his assimilation in a foreign land.

The artist further dissects the meaning of translation by looking at how people may be “translated from familiar surroundings⁴” to one that is not. She observes for instance how the houses Kamal builds do not tether him to the land. This has been made especially prominent with border closures brought on by the pandemic. Notions of inequitable access and xenophobia are brought to the surface as the migrant community in Malaysia continues to face limiting situations.

By juxtaposing Limerick’s Singaporean and Lala’s Malaysian perspectives, we hope to expand perceptions of ‘migrant workers’. We also see that they encompass the various other groups of people who work across borders due to the porous borders between Singapore and Malaysia, and reflects the reality of diasporic communities across the globe who are confined to their adopted homes in the pandemic.

Quỳnh Lâm, 'Betweenessee', 2020, dual-channel video, 2'25". Image courtesy of the artist.

As a diasporic Vietnamese in America, Quỳnh Lâm’s (b. 1988, Vietnam) videography diptych resonates with Lala’s theme of uprootedness. The two works ‘Betweenessee’ (2020) and ‘Missing Link’ (2020) form a pair of visual and sonic exchange between the artist’s inner self and immediate surroundings by mirroring certain contingent elements comprising children’s songs, geopolitical maps, collected ephemera, and reenactments.

In ‘Betweenessee’, the artist goes back and forth between her childhood memories of the nostalgic tune ‘Reo Vang Bình Minh’ and the peony garden just outside her studio in the United States, where she has been stuck throughout the pandemic. The song was penned by Lưu Hữu Phước some 70 years ago, prior to the America-Vietnam war and the intertwined histories between the two countries. In Vietnamese, the lyrics paint an innocent and picturesque landscape of children cheering and singing in a flowery meadow immersed in scents, wind, and light set against a contemporary backdrop without children.

Such representations are reversed in ‘Missing Link’. The protest song ‘I Shall Not Be Moved’ provides a deeply spiritual link to the American South that is full of traumatic memories. The bamboo – a cultural symbol of Vietnam – embodies the artist’s displaced identity after being literally ‘moved’ away from her hometown. The artist gives us an in-video performance with the bamboo leaves and fragments, onto which the words ‘khắc xuất’ and ‘khắc nhập’ are inscribed. In a popular Vietnamese folk story, these are the two magical chants that would make the hundred joints of a bamboo come together or fall apart, metaphorically signifying the construction and deconstruction of the diasporic Vietnamese identity. Through the dialogue between the present/past habitant and the past/present habitat, the artist seeks to dissect and reaffirm elements of the self by finding commonalities with other victims of trauma across space and time.

Hà Ninh Pham, 'Institute of Distance', 2020, video game (still), user-defined duration. Image courtesy of the artist.

If Lâm’s way of coping with displacement is through bridging geographical, cultural and historical boundaries, then Hà Ninh Pham’s (b. 1991, Vietnam) search for his identity goes a step further in diffusing the boundaries of reality. In 2016, he moved to the United States. As a migrant artist in search of his footing and identity, he avoided the partisan politics by creating his own make-believe universe. ‘My Land’ (2017 – present) is a series of cartography and structures with their own “systems of logic, language, and metrology”⁵. It is a multi-year, multi-disciplinary architecture that expands through two-dimensional drawings, three-dimensional sculptures, writings, and a virtual game.

The interconnected landscape and architectural sketches manifest as a sci-fi universe with each structure conveying an ideology. As he stages his mindscapes, the sketches become a form of escapism and self-empowerment. When the artist fell ill and underwent a surgery during the lockdown, his experience of being limited had a profound impact on him. He notes, “If I treat my work as an organic body that can grow, sometimes beyond my will, then the burden and responsibility of following the rules will be gone⁶.” Thinking about human consciousness and subjectivities, his works started to take on a more organic form. In spite of the individual's isolation, this immersive experience in ‘Institute of Distance’ (2020) allows the audience to connect with the psyche of the artist, and creating a safe space for interaction.

Crystal Sim, 'I’ll always be here for you', 2020, artist book, 29.7 x 21 x 5.5cm, 116 pages. Image courtesy of the artist.

Pham’s exploration into the deeper psyche is paralleled with Crystal Sim’s (b. 1995, Singapore) intimate manipulation of her book, which is an outlet for her struggles with self-harm in recent times. In ‘I’ll always be here for you’ (2020), she likens the blank canvas as an extension of her flesh. Working with multiple techniques such as embroidering, piercing, and crinkling the papers with saltwater, the artist pulls her internalised threads of tensions inside out onto each and every literal fibre of the work.

As one flips through the book, the sequence of photography turns from dark to light and repeats itself like recurring episodes of struggle. Messages of self-loathing are hidden within the folded papers, suggesting the fear that one might feel when seeking help. As more people spend time in isolation or at least with constrained boundaries, reflection and discussions about psychological barriers and mental wellness abound, and remind us of human’s basic need for sociality and communal interaction.

Lala Bohang, 'The New Ways of Greetings (Tegur Sapa Baru) - cipika cipiki', 2020, video (still), 0'56". Image courtesy of the artist.

Lala Bohang’s (b. 1985, Indonesia) experimental instructional videos ‘The New Ways of Greetings’ (2020) imagines how human interaction in the post-pandemic world may be transformed. In this triptych, she explores new ways of performing common Indonesia greetings such as the salaman (handshake), cipika cipiki (kissing on left and right cheeks), and salim (kissing the back of palm or receiving a senior person’s back of palm on your forehead). Even prior to the imposed distancing, different comfort levels among individuals had often led to confusing and awkward social interactions in reciprocating one’s greeting. For what appears to be a whimsical imagination, her videos push us to revisit how modes of sociality have evolved and will continue to do so.

“By disputing assumptions, feeding curiosities, and rereading traditions, the artworks in this exhibition dissect and assemble the various notions of psychological, interpersonal, and socio-political limits as they have been understood and experienced by us all.”

By disputing assumptions, feeding curiosities, and rereading traditions, the artworks in this exhibition dissect and assemble the various notions of psychological, interpersonal, and socio-political limits as they have been understood and experienced by us all. Through exposing these parameters, we hope to continue bridging new systems of connections in spite of the limits we face.

The curatorial essay has been edited for length.

This curatorial essay was penned by Of Limits Collectives, the recipient of the Platform Projects 2020 Curatorial Award, overseen by NTU Centre for Contemporary Art, Singapore. The group consists of five graduates from the Master of Arts in Museum Studies and Curatorial Practices programme at the School of Media, Arts and Design, Nanyang Technological University. The group members Sneha Chaudhury, Chay Wei Qin, Ace Le, Jason Leung and Beatrice Morel come from different backgrounds, and aim to thread diverse perspectives in discussing sociopolitical pulses, tensions and clashes of classes, origins, races, and beliefs.

‘Of Limits’ (2021) exhibition is on view from 3 to 30 March 2021 at Stamford Arts Centre,155 Waterloo Street, #03-02, Singapore 187962,.

To read other writings from the Excerpts series, click here.

¹ Cole, G. (2021). COVID-19, Limit Experiences, and Undergoing the Situation: Therapeutic Implications for Pandemic Times. Journal of Humanistic Psychology 2021, Vol. 61(2) 190– 197
² Stanford University (2006). Karl Jaspers. https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/jaspers/
³ Interview with Kelly Limerick.
⁴ Mendolicchio, H B., Bosch, S. (2017). Art in Context: Learning from the field. Berlin: Goethe-Institut e.V.
⁵ Hà Ninh Pham’s artist statement.
⁶ A+ Works of Art (2020). Interview with Hà Ninh Pham.