Since its inception in 2015, National Gallery Singapore has been the go-to place for art lovers. Here's a flex you may or may not know: the gallery boasts the world's largest public display of Southeast Asian art. So it's wildly apt that the gallery has just debuted its first-ever Project Space, Dalam Southeast Asia. The space invites visitors to a journey into emerging perspectives, featuring under-studied artists from the region and innovative curatorial approaches in the presentation of Southeast Asian modern and contemporary art.
It's about time the lesser-known narratives of art in Southeast Asia is questioned and explored. After all, Southeast Asian artists haven't been studied as much as their European counterparts, not even in their own region. The artists that are featured in Dalam Southeast Asia, according to curator Roger Nelson, "are all incredible artists who deserve to be better known."
"On a deeper level, they remind us of the connections between Singapore and these regions," he adds.
Additionally, in line with the global movement of self-reflexive practices being adopted by museums, the Gallery also contributes from a distinctly Southeast Asian standpoint by sparking conversations around the myriad questions confronting the production, display, and writing of modern and contemporary art in the region. Curator Shabbir Hussain Mustafa brilliantly encapsulates it in a sentence: "As we're curating the exhibitions, we're also writing the story of art."
Let's talk about the Project Space itself. Located in the UOB Southeast Asia Gallery, Dalam Southeast Asia is conceived as a small format exhibition. Its location inside the UOB Southeast Asia Gallery enables the public to gain an ‘inside look’ into the fresh curatorial approaches against the backdrop of key masterpieces in Singapore’s National Collection. In fact, a majority of the artworks in Dalam Southeast Asia exhibitions will be drawn from the National Collection as well, including many never-before-seen recent acquisitions and donations.
The space opens to the public from today, launching with its debut show, The Tailors and the Mannequins: Chen Cheng Mei and You Khin, which will run till April 10, 2022. It is the first of four rotating, small-format exhibitions slated to roll out in the space approximately every six months till 2023.