Brilliant news for art lovers: Singapore Art Museum (SAM) has just announced the return of the Singapore Biennale for its seventh edition from October 18 to March 19, 2023.
For the uninitiated, the Singapore Biennale is a large-scale biennial contemporary art exhibition that serves as the country's major platform to showcase works from both regional and international artists. The previous iteration, Singapore Biennale 2019: Every Step in the Right Direction, took over multiple sites around Singapore, with 77 artists and art collectives from 36 countries and territories.
The 2022 edition of the Biennale will be helmed by a team of four Co-Artistic Directors from around the world: Binna Choi from South Korea/the Netherlands, Nida Ghouse from India, living in Germany, June Yap from Singapore and Ala Younis from Jordan. The curators were chosen because of their strong profile of engaging multi-disciplinary, participatory practices, activating different sites and archives, and drawing relations between the historical and contemporary.
In drawing out perspectives from the region as situated within the world, the SB2022 Co-Artistic Directors reflect upon and revisit curatorial approaches and collaborative forms of cultural production, generating renewed perspectives in contemporary art, as well as engaging emerging vocabularies, infrastructures, critiques and narratives that are of interest to the region and beyond.
"While the region of Southeast Asia remains the Singapore Biennale’s immediate context, this edition will journey through unfamiliar terrains and beyond geography itself. In an attempt to grapple with questions pressing for humanity, the Biennale will conceive ways to relate to a public without relying on spectacle. Turning away from the conventional preoccupation with the visual, it will dwell instead on interiority, gathering around other senses and sensibilities," says a statement by the Co-Artistic Directors. "Artists, curators, researchers and publics will be invited to imagine the possibilities of a biennale, of art and life, and of being.”
More updates will be revealed in Q1 next year. In the meantime, we're looking forward to the return of this major art festival to Singapore, especially at times like these.
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