Since Mainland Chinese contemporary art took the Venice Biennale by storm in the mid nineties, Asian participation in the world’s biggest and most established visual art event has increased steadily. Japan has been involved since the early days, and while Hong Kong, China and Korea radiate the aura of veteran players in this, the Biennale’s 50th anniversary year, Southeast Asian new-comers are still in pioneering mode.
Unlike founding participants who run purpose-built pavilions in the Giardini di Castello, most Asian countries have, for their part, tied themselves to various venues dotted around the city, this variety and geographical broadening an appropriate reflection of the Biennale’s growing cultural diversity and cosmopolitanism. A record sixty-three national pavilions are exhibiting in 2003.
Singapore presented its maiden pavilion in 2001, with a mixed lineup which included Suzann Victor, Matthew Ngui, Salleh Japar and Chen KeZhan. Two years later, it presents an equally heterogeneous group on the ground floor of the Fondazione Levi. Featuring the multi-disciplinary Tan Swie Hian, Francis Ng, a Philip Morris 2002 prize-winner, and video and multi-media artist Heman Chong, the organisers’ choices aim to reflect a comprehensive representation of local practice.
Tan Swie Hian, as well as producing works on paper and canvas for the Pavilion, conducted a public calligraphy-writing performance in Piazza San Marco, its subject a philosophical response to the 50th Biennale’s theme ‘Dreams and Conflicts: The Dictatorship of the Viewer’. Calligraphic writing, the artist explained, is one of China’s oldest forms of artistic expression but its visual impact is contemporary. And while the medium may be traditional, both the content of the original text and staging of such a large-scale public performance, imbued it with a distinctly contemporary... The rest of this article is available to subscribers of Eyeline