Mirror Mirror

A look at the Singapore Biennale 2016.

- Nadya Wang

The poetically titled Singapore Biennale, ‘An Atlas of Mirrors’, will showcase artworks from Asia that reveal the close ties countries in the region share with each other, and in the process reveal their intrinsic commonalities and distinctness. The event is organised by the Singapore Art Museum (SAM) and commissioned by the National Arts Council of Singapore, and will take place from 27 October 2016 to 26 February 2017.

The previous edition, ‘If The World Changed’, which took place in 2013, focused on Southeast Asia. ‘An Atlas of Mirrors’ widens its focus to include South and East Asia as well; it is put together by Creative Director Susie Lingham and her team of curators from SAM: Joyce Toh, Tan Siuli, Louis Ho, Andrea Fam and John Tung; together with associate curators Suman Gopinath from Bangalore, India; Nur Hanim Khairuddin from Ipoh, Malaysia; Xiang Liping from Shanghai, China; and Michael Lee from Singapore.

This time, there are only 9 curators, compared to the 27 who were involved in the previous edition of the Singapore Biennale. “For this edition, we elected to have a smaller curatorial team as compared to the 2013 edition so that conversations between all involved could be more engaged,” SAM curator Louis Ho explains. “The SAM team met with our team of associate curators over a series of curatorial workshops held in Singapore, where we worked through ideas, artists, artwork proposals, sites, themes and curatorial narratives.”