Works That Speak Volumes

Performance artist and ceramicist Jason Lim lets his body and art do the talking

 

- Jason Lim

The only source of light emanating through the dark gallery comes from 12 candles, each pencil-thin and as long as a finger. They are arranged in a haphazard row, held upright by a small pool of hot wax at their base – wax that is seared onto the fingernails and forearm of Mr. Jason Lim.

It must hurt, but performance artist Lim gives no indication of any pain, his face a mask of pure concentration as he makes his way around the room. With slow, purposeful movements that speak volumes of self-control, he arranges his body into various positions – standing erect against a wall, candle-lit arm clasping at his face or in a chest salute; lying with his belly flat on the ground, limbs sprayed at awkward angles.

The audience watches in complete silence, transfixed by the human candelabra. There’s something mesmerizing and oddly meditative about Lim’s hour-and-a-half long performance, his most recent one to date in Singapore. Perhaps it’s the way the candlelight glows, throwing his sharp features into relief – close-shaven head, hollow eyes, angular cheekbones – or how he manages to hold each position with an absolute stillness for minutes on end.

It’s this deliberate slowing down of time, of enforced silent contemplation that marks many performance pieces of Lim’s, who is one of Singapore’s most celebrated artists. “Sometimes I think we are so lacking in patience,” he says of our lives today. So the pregnant pauses in his work are intentional. “It’s about me really spending time with the material, and me spending time with the audience... I hope that in one and half hours, they are also in a meditative situation...maybe they are clearer in their head through that silence.”

He muses: “Art has to possess a spiritual value, something that opens certain states of consciousness, because we are losing ourselves too quickly.”