Hoo Fan Chon, Citra Sasmita, Vuth Lyno: New Works

NTU Centre for Contemporary Art Singapore is pleased to present the exhibition Hoo Fan Chon, Citra Sasmita, Vuth Lyno: New Works. The exhibition marks the culmination of the first cycle of SEA AiR—Studio Residencies for Southeast Asian Artists in the European Union (SEA AiR). As participating artists in the inaugural cycle of SEA AiR, Hoo Fan Chon (Malaysia), Citra Sasmita (Indonesia), and Vuth Lyno (Cambodia) have each been awarded a three-month-long residency at an art institution in Europe as well as funding for the creation of artworks. Stemming out of a year-long engagement, Hoo Fan Chon, Citra Sasmita, Vuth Lyno: New Works is the outcome of a multifaceted process made of journeys and institutional collaborations, fieldwork and encounters, research and artmaking.

The residencies unfolded in Europe in the first half of 2022. In residence at HIAP—Helsinki International Artist Programme (Finland) from late February to late May, Hoo Fan Chon soon became fascinated by the salmon pink hue that adorns the facades of many buildings across Finland and its neighbouring countries. This chromatic cue tied in with the artist’s ongoing interest in issues of taste, class, and fish culture—the son of a fisherman, fish-based imagery and foodscapes are often the subject of his work. Hoo Fan Chon’s erratic investigation, imbued with a distinctive sense of irony, around the cosmetic processing of farmed salmon and the social status of salmon consumption as a signifier of class and wealth in Chinese culture resulted in a multimedia installation. How to turn your siakap into salmon is a video work, inspired by tutorials commonly found on YouTube, that illustrates DIY techniques to colour affordable fish in order to simulate a salmon-eating experience. The artist’s first experiment with 3D animation, the installation I have never seen a swimming salmon in my life projects swimming salmon cuts onto an aquarium with a voiceover about the plights that threaten the survival of salmons. Finnish landscape painting series is a series of painterly interventions on found paintings where Chinese blessings and images of the proverbial “carp leaping over the dragon’s gate” are inscribed onto landscape paintings that the artist sourced from thrift shops around Helsinki.

The artistic practice of Citra Sasmita revisits ancient Balinese mythologies and retools traditional artistic techniques and materials to address misconceptions that persist in contemporary society, especially with regard to the status of women. The residency at WIELS (Brussels, Belgium) from April to June enabled her to encounter and research the legacy of her ancestors held in European museum collections built during the colonial era by often dubious and unethical means. The installation Timur Merah Project VIII: Pilgrim, How You Journey revolves around the figure of I Dewa Agung Istri Kanya, a queen of the Klungkung kingdom in Bali, who fiercely opposed the Dutch colonisers in the 19th century. Ruled out from most historical accounts, the history of this charismatic woman leader is revived in Citra’s powerful imagery and interspersed with scenes from the Bhima Swarga epic depicting the hero’s journey between Heaven and Hell. Painted on traditional Kamasan canvases, the paintings are mounted on antique pillars arranged in an eight-pointed star configuration that references ancient Balinese cosmologies. The installation also comprises a double-channel video, the artist’s first video work, in which a singer performs the poem Prelambang Bhasa Wewatekan (The Coded Language of Symbols), written by the Queen herself. Underneath the tantric symbolism of the poem secretly lurk the Queen’s memoir, anti-Dutch propaganda messages, and military strategies.

Pursuing intersecting interests in architecture, the politics of space, and place-making practices, during the residency at Villa Arson (Nice, France) from March to May, Vuth Lyno had the opportunity to travel several times to the French capital and research the architectural remnants of the 1931 International Colonial Exposition which took place in the Bois de Vincennes, a forest park in Eastern Paris. He discovered that the former Cameroon Pavilion was turned into a Buddhist temple in the late 1970s. Following its conversion into a place of worship, the building and the surrounding greenery have come to play an important role in the spiritual, cultural, and social life of the Cambodian community in France. A migrant community’s appropriation of a site previously used to display colonial (mis)representations of those very communities led the artist to develop a broader reflection on the role of urban parks as sites of refuge wherein minorities and marginalised groups (sex workers, queer communities, the homeless, etc.) can find emancipation and enact their agency. The resulting installation Vibrating Park-Forest ensues from a comparative study of heteronormative uses and grassroots practices that unfold in specific parks in Paris, Phnom Penh, and Singapore. Vibrating Park-Forest is the artist’s first installation made of paper, a material he began to experiment with during his residency at Villa Arson.

On Wednesday, January 11, artists Hoo Fan Chon, Citra Sasmita, and Vuth Lyno will participate in a joint talk to unravel their year-long journey from the residencies overseas to the development of their research and the creation of new works.

The exhibition is curated by Dr Anna Lovecchio, Assistant Director (Programmes), and NTU CCA Singapore. The project leader of SEA AiR is Ute Meta Bauer Founding Director, NTU CCA Singapore, and Professor, School of Art, Design and Media, Nanyang Technological University.

SEA AiR—Studio Residencies for Southeast Asian Artists in the European Union is funded by the European Union.

NTU Centre for Contemporary Art Singapore
A national research centre of Nanyang Technological University Singapore, with a focus on Spaces of the Curatorial, NTU Centre for Contemporary Art Singapore (NTU CCA Singapore) addresses the urgencies of our time such as the climate crisis and its impact on communities. A leading international art institution, driven by dynamic thinking in its three-fold constellation: RESIDENCIES, RESEARCH AND ACADEMIC EDUCATION, and EXHIBITIONS. It brings forth innovative, multi-disciplinary, holistic and experimental forms of emergent artistic and curatorial practices that intersect the present and histories of contemporary art embedded in social, geo-political, geo-cultural spheres with other fields of knowledge. NTU CCA Singapore’s office and research centre is located at Gillman Barracks.

About Nanyang Technological University
Young and research intensive, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore (NTU Singapore) has 33,000 undergraduate and postgraduate students in engineering, business, science, humanities, arts, social sciences, education and medicine. Ranked among the world’s top universities, NTU is home to world-class institutes—the National Institute of Education, S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies, Earth Observatory of Singapore, and Singapore Centre for Environmental Life Sciences Engineering.

Besides being reputed as one of the world’s most beautiful campuses, the NTU Smart Campus is a living testbed of tomorrow’s technologies and a model of sustainability, with 61 Green Mark Platinum awards for its building projects. In addition to its main campus in the western part of Singapore, NTU also has a medical campus in Novena, Singapore’s healthcare district.