Of Fingerbowls & Hankies: Chris Yap voyeurs through the Baba House

                                [Photo © Chris Yap, Singapore]

Date: 24 Jun 2009 - 4 Aug 2010
Venue: Baba House, 157 Neil Road

Visits to the exhibition are by appointment only.
Please contact 6227 5731 or email babahouse@nus.edu.sg.

Artist and photographer Chris Yap explores what it means to be ‘Peranakan’ in our contemporary world. Whilst developments within the community have been habitually analysed as a Southeast Asian-Sino-Anglo amalgamation, Yap’s works prompt us to reflect on whether this hybridization has intensified, changed or evolved through interactions with global flows and contemporary culture. Using portraiture and still-life photography, aspects of the Peranakan as are commonly represented are juxtaposed against daily life and experiences. The histories of traditional Peranakan objects are considered, drawing attention to interesting and varied opportunities. What continues to be traditionally and exclusively Peranakan and what possibilities unfold moving forward?



Yi Hwan Kwon:A World Not Quite Alike

[Image: Min-Hyung, Bus-Stop Series, 2000]

Date: 20 June to 30 August 2009

Venue: NUS Museum

The freeze frame poses of Korean sculptor Yi Hwan Kwon's creations confound the stability of perceptual knowledge, distorts ocular reality and sets us up on an encounter with denizens in a world not quite alike ours. Taking as its starting point how light ignites the visual and accords the experience of space and distance, Yi Hwan Kwon is provocateur in a parallel planet, agitating visual depth sensation – the human ability to navigate and respond consistently predicated upon our perception of the distance of objects in an environ. The affect of art lies not so much in the poses but rather in the compression of distance, space and time in Yi's world.

Guest Curator: Wang Zineng

RE:CLAIMING HERITAGE: Shophouses and Historic Districts in Kuching and Kuala Terengganu

[Anthony Chung Ching Fatt, Row of shophouses in front of India Mosque along Gambier Street, Kuching, 2008, Watercolour]

Date: 11 June - 28 June 2009
Venue: NUS Museum


Commonly found in the historic districts of Malaysia and Singapore, shophouses and row houses form unique townscapes. Diverse in form and style, they represent different periods of development and are architectural manifestations of multicultural influence.

The exhibition showcases this versatile vernacular built legacy from Kuching in Sarawak and from Kuala Terengganu, East Coast Peninsular Malaysia. Student participants of the UM-NUS Joint Studio Programmes of 2008 and 2009 carried out field investigations of the shophouses, rowhouses and their historic urban contexts. Their findings are presented through mapping, measured drawings, sketches and photography.

See one of the student group's video documentation on Youtube:
UM-NUS Joint Studio Programme 2009 - Group A Video

Proverbial In(ter)ventions:Ratnadeep Gopal Adivrekar



[Image: Every move brings a change, 2007, Oil on Canvas]

Date: 6 June - 26 July 2009

Venue: NUS Museum

From pithy statements that condense common experience into memorable form and ponderings on the dilemmas of postcoloniality – Proverbial In(ter)ventions – attempts to dislodge the classical project of producing precise meaning out of nebulous chronologies. Revealed in the artworks is the contention that man is not only made human by the curricular content of humanity’s knowledge and education but also by its inadequacies, ruptures and paradoxes.

Curator: Mustafa