How Do We... [2022]
[12.01.22 - 19.03.22]
Continuing Amanda's ongoing exploration in interpersonal communication in fraught urban conditions, ‘How do we…’ presents an exhibition of the conversations that have been undertaken by Amanda and her collaborators culminated over the past six months.
Amanda's longstanding work in communicative dynamics since the 90s is evident from influential works such as Let's Chat (1996), Singirl in Dresden (2000), We Are The World...These Are Our Stories (2017), and Where Got Time (2018). The open question 'How Do We...' is an extension of this work as an open invitation to the public to converse together, and to imagine group conversation as a process of collaborative art-making. With these conversations, Amanda takes on newer questions pertinent to the times of pervasive isolation in the midst of a public health crisis. These questions ask about time as gift, about our necessary social dependencies, and the coalescence or dissolution of our selves. The sessions are acts of becoming, both together and as individuals, in a necessarily uncertain and chaotic flux of divergences and emphasizes, revelations and misapprehensions. This flux, to use a pair of dialogic terms Amanda has repeated throughout these past months, is one of interdependence and dependence (incidentally also the name of an artwork in her ...These Are Our Stories exhibition at STPI.
By exchanging time between Amanda and her collaborators, and by extension the viewer/audience, time's obligations, solitude and disappointments are brought under closer scrutiny, unravelling possibilities for the ways in which we can think about time and time in relation to those and the world around us. Time as far as the present that we can comprehend is, as Carlo Rovelli points out, impossible to define globally, 'it is defined only in our vicinity, in an approximate way'. To be present, that is to be self-situated within a moment, and to grasp the present, that is to be aware of the moment one is situated, becomes a matter of proximity. To be present is to acknowledge proximity to an other, to sense our bearings with the help of another as acts of co-location. Conversation, with Amanda, becomes an occasion for not simply finding ourselves, but also for finding where Singapore is in the present. Isolated here and unable to move beyond our borders or to welcome others in, conversation is Amanda's invitation to speak together, to understand what it means to pass through the passage of the pandemic as Singapore.
The exhibition features four distinct sets of recordings, each a unique set of excerpts from the three sessions of conversations Amanda has had with eighteen individuals. Additionally, the chalk writings are Amanda's post-sessions reflections after listening to the conversations again. The exhibition space is set up to recall the setup of the conversations themselves, which took place here in Grey Projects, and in great informality. Visitors are invited to take a seat, begin conversations with others, and begin a conversation with Amanda by responding to her with an initial voice memo.
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Amanda Heng is an interdisciplinary artist interested in the clash of eastern and western values, traditions and gender roles in the context of a multi-cultural and fast-changing society of Singapore. In recent works, Heng’s focus has been on the issues of history, memory, communication and human relationships in urban conditions. She often works collaboratively with people of different cultural backgrounds, and from within and outside art circles.
As a Cultural Medallion recipient in 2010, she had also been involved in the founding of two artist initiatives in Singapore, The Artists’ Village in 1988, and WITAS (Women In the Arts Singapore) in 1999. Heng has been part of the 3rd Asia-Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art (1999), the 7th Havana Biennial (200), the 1st Fukuoka Asian Art Triennial (1999); the inaugural Singapore Biennale (2006), She was featured in the Singapore Contemporary Artists Series presented by the Singapore Art Museum in a solo exhibition entitled Speak To Me, Walk With Me in 2011. A book in the same title was also launched at the opening of the exhibition. Heng currently practices full-time and supervises MA students in LASALLE College of the Arts.
Amanda Heng has championed the representation of women within exhibitions in Singapore through examining notions of the female body through her performances, her work with WITAS (Women in the Arts Singapore) and through various artists’ initiatives in the early 1990s.Heng's recent work is focused on the issues of history, memory, communication and human relationships in urban conditions.