Initially I researched the Moving Image Archives of the British Empire and Commonwealth Museum (B... more Initially I researched the Moving Image Archives of the British Empire and Commonwealth Museum (Bristol) for this 3-screen installation work. The work features edited fragments of the histories encapsulated within the archives from the 1930's to 1970's and covering vast ...
'becoming' consisted of 6 DVD works shown on courtroom monitors with sound interspersed t... more 'becoming' consisted of 6 DVD works shown on courtroom monitors with sound interspersed throughout the space. The installation was an extension of an earlier single screen version titled 'Vent and Mimesis' (2003). The focus of these works is the construction and negotiation of personal identity within broader socio-political frameworks and reflects on the anxieties of globalisation, immigration and cultural differences in relation to notions of citizenship and ‘naturalisation’. The performative work involves the act of rehearsing, reciting and reconstructing pledges thereby engaging and extending the writings of Judith Butler, Jean Fisher and Jacques Derrida, and practices of Trinh, Fusco and Green. 'becoming' examines the processes of role-play and self-actualisation and explores the ambiguities of translation (Spivak, Sarat Maharaj), probing into the shifting values of the spoken word to expose its relative meanings, and the act of pledge-taking as a structure of ordering, having power and control over the individual. In these ways, becoming considers how a sense of self - the physical and private self, as well as the more public and nation-ed self - comes into being as both process and performance
Tan was guest editor for 'And Now China?', a special print edition of the Ctrl+P journal,... more Tan was guest editor for 'And Now China?', a special print edition of the Ctrl+P journal, which critically responded to the celebratory rhetoric’s of ‘China Now’ and other celebratory markers of China's global ascent in 2008. As well as the introductory article 'Dialogical Skirmishes', Tan also interviewed Hans Ulrich Obrist
Installation with moving image, digitally rendered textile, and a collection of black and white m... more Installation with moving image, digitally rendered textile, and a collection of black and white magic lantern slides. New commission for the Tate Britain / National Gallery Singapore iteration of 'Artist & Empire'
This was a 20 minute presentation at the panel discussion event "Grounded Conversations"... more This was a 20 minute presentation at the panel discussion event "Grounded Conversations", which marked the launch of the book "Come Cannibalise Us, Why Don’t You? / Sila Mengkanibalkan Kami MahuTak Erika Tan", edited by Erika Tan in 2014. Speaking remotely, out of time and place, mediated digitally, the figure of Halimah Binti Abdulla (an expert weaver who arrived in London from Malaya in 1924 to participate in the Malayan Pavilion in The Empire Exhibition) speaks for the absence of her author, the editor of the book and the maker of the works exhibited in the exhibition. She informs the audience of her new collaboration with the artist Erika Tan, and the nature of her work and life within the Empire Exhibition where she both lived and worked and eventually contracted pneumonia. Halima Binti Abdulla died in London and was buried within the Muslim section of Brookwood Cemetery. Her 'story' remains dispersed fragments within the footnotes of colonial history. Her grave is unmarked, her origins are contestable, she could however be seen as Singapore's first female cultural ambassador. This history is the basis of the artists' future collaborations
The exhibition included a version of a film installation made by Erika Tan for the Diaspora Pavil... more The exhibition included a version of a film installation made by Erika Tan for the Diaspora Pavilion at the Venice Biennale 2017. A Place in the World is an exhibition of photography and film by women artists at East Gallery NUA, timed to coincide with the Southbank Centre’s Women of the World (WoW) Festival, hosted in Norwich for the first time. The works in the exhibition have been assembled as an exploration of the relationship between place and female identity. Place can be taken as location, that of the artist and the subject of the work, or social place and how gender constructs a female artist’s place in society. Some of the works in the exhibition are self-portraits while others depict women that the artist has some kind of empathy with, the artist sometimes putting herself in their place. Reflection is used as a formal device by some of these artists, either through the photography of an image in a reflective surface, or in the case of a double screen video piece, to reflec...
Exhibited in the Diaspora Pavilion, Venice Biennale, May 10 to 26th Nov 2017. The ‘Forgotten’ Wea... more Exhibited in the Diaspora Pavilion, Venice Biennale, May 10 to 26th Nov 2017. The ‘Forgotten’ Weaver is an installation which assembles together for the Diaspora Pavilion in Venice, two video works from an ongoing project designed to establish a presence for Halimah-The-Empire-Exhibition-Weaver-Who-Died-Whilst-Demonstrating-Her-Craft. Halimah Binti Abdullah lived and performed in the Malayan Pavilion during the Empire Exhibition (Wembley, 1924) until her untimely demise and removal to her final resting place in an unmarked grave in Woking, UK. For this project, Tan employs a variety of positioned voices and media to foster a spectral return of this minor historical figure. The first video work, APA JIKA, The Mis-Placed Comma is a work in 3 parts commissioned by The National Gallery Singapore and filmed within its exhibitions spaces during the final stages of its transition from colonial period law courts to National Gallery. The video brings together a displaced, deconstructed and...
In Contesting British Chinese Culture, ed. Dr Diana Yeh and Dr Ashley Thorpe, published by Palgra... more In Contesting British Chinese Culture, ed. Dr Diana Yeh and Dr Ashley Thorpe, published by Palgrave (2018) including contributions from Dr. Susan Pui San Lok, Dr Katie Hill etc. 2018 From the publishers website: This is the first text to address British Chinese culture. It explores British Chinese cultural politics in terms of national and international debates on the Chinese diaspora, race, multiculture, identity and belonging, and transnational ‘Chineseness’. Collectively, the essays look at how notions of ‘British Chinese culture’ have been constructed and challenged in the visual arts, theatre and performance, and film, since the mid-1980s. They contest British Chinese invisibility, showing how practice is not only heterogeneous, but is forged through shifting historical and political contexts; continued racialization, the currency of Orientalist stereotypes and the possibility of their subversion; the policies of institutions and their funding strategies; and dynamic relationsh...
Lecture for Accumulations, Sediments, Dispersals: Artworks in Transit. Accumulations, Sediments, ... more Lecture for Accumulations, Sediments, Dispersals: Artworks in Transit. Accumulations, Sediments, Dispersals: Artworks in Transit organized by Kristina Pia Hofer, Eva Kernbauer and Marietta Kesting This workshop addresses the mobility of artworks: the tensions between their movement across borders, nations, cultures and formats, as well as their mobilizing effects in aesthetic, political, social and economic realms. While post-mediality and digitalization suggest limitless fluidity across formats and geographies, effortless transmission and reception, these views are contested by postcolonial perspectives that call attention to the lingering unequal distribution of (material and immaterial) resources, and by the ongoing institutional and economical valorization of artworks as objects tied to their material substance.
What happens to symbols of cultural dominance when the world-order shifts? Set in Saltram House, ... more What happens to symbols of cultural dominance when the world-order shifts? Set in Saltram House, an English country house (now National Trust property), the film takes place ‘some point in the not so distant future’, at a moment in time when China’s ascendance as a global power has given rise to an opportunity to re-visit history differently. Using a mixture of documentary and narrative film tropes, the cut and paste aesthetics of hip hop and chinoiserie; the history of Saltram House as we know it, under-goes a slippery transition in an attempt to remain relevant and shore-up its status as cultural capital. Sensing Obscurity I: The Manor House; English Literature; artefacts and the performativity of objects; contrapuntal readings; and looking inwards backwards. Duration: 28.31min Medium: 2-channel HDV projection, 4 track audio, looped Sensing Obscurity II: Chinese Chippendale Duration: 1.30min Medium: streamed video with bootleg DVD Sensing Obscurity III: After Chinoiserie Version I...
... Erika Tan's latest work, 'Pidgin: Interrupted Transmission', is a complex and ... more ... Erika Tan's latest work, 'Pidgin: Interrupted Transmission', is a complex and ambitious project which appears to take as its starting point the task of defining and locating the origins of 'pidgin English'. ... 'Do you translate by eye or by ear?' asks Trinh T. Minh-ha, elsewhere. ...
Unfolding over a period of three weeks is a special project by London based, Artist-in-Residence ... more Unfolding over a period of three weeks is a special project by London based, Artist-in-Residence Erika Tan (Singapore). Focusing on the forgotten historical figure of Halimah the Malay weaver, Tan will revive her through a series of footnotes and instigate a process of collective labour towards the understanding that history is an effort built by many. Halimah lived and worked with 19 other Malayans in the 1924 Empire Exhibition in London essentially engaging not only in the production of woven material but also symbolically reproducing Britain’s capital (its colonial subjects). During the day Halimah demonstrated her craft and sold products on one side of the Malayan Pavilion and at night lived behind the displays, cooking, eating and performing everyday life. This project seeks to liberate Halimah from her textual existence and re-insert her into a contemporary dialogue around nation, art and value – or place, labour, capital. The Lab will be used in a triad of layers – as an exhi...
The presentation revolves around two connected works: Come Cannibalize Us, Why Don’t You? and Apa... more The presentation revolves around two connected works: Come Cannibalize Us, Why Don’t You? and Apa Jika, The Mis-placed Comma. Both projects discuss practices of collecting and display in the context of colonial and post-colonial museums and explore possible points of re-entry for the fugitive or rogue object. Come Cannibalize Us, Why Don’t You? is an artistic response that re-visits the artifacts and writings from an exhibition shown at the NUS Museum. Apa Jika, The Mis-placed Comma focuses on the ‘forgotten’ figure of a Malayan weaver in the British Empire Exhibition in 1924. The work was commissioned for the inaugural launch of Singapore’s National Gallery, and is currently exhibited in The Diaspora Pavilion, Venice. Both artworks engage with the tropes and traps involved in representation, and the transnational entanglements of moving objects and people.
Initially I researched the Moving Image Archives of the British Empire and Commonwealth Museum (B... more Initially I researched the Moving Image Archives of the British Empire and Commonwealth Museum (Bristol) for this 3-screen installation work. The work features edited fragments of the histories encapsulated within the archives from the 1930's to 1970's and covering vast ...
'becoming' consisted of 6 DVD works shown on courtroom monitors with sound interspersed t... more 'becoming' consisted of 6 DVD works shown on courtroom monitors with sound interspersed throughout the space. The installation was an extension of an earlier single screen version titled 'Vent and Mimesis' (2003). The focus of these works is the construction and negotiation of personal identity within broader socio-political frameworks and reflects on the anxieties of globalisation, immigration and cultural differences in relation to notions of citizenship and ‘naturalisation’. The performative work involves the act of rehearsing, reciting and reconstructing pledges thereby engaging and extending the writings of Judith Butler, Jean Fisher and Jacques Derrida, and practices of Trinh, Fusco and Green. 'becoming' examines the processes of role-play and self-actualisation and explores the ambiguities of translation (Spivak, Sarat Maharaj), probing into the shifting values of the spoken word to expose its relative meanings, and the act of pledge-taking as a structure of ordering, having power and control over the individual. In these ways, becoming considers how a sense of self - the physical and private self, as well as the more public and nation-ed self - comes into being as both process and performance
Tan was guest editor for 'And Now China?', a special print edition of the Ctrl+P journal,... more Tan was guest editor for 'And Now China?', a special print edition of the Ctrl+P journal, which critically responded to the celebratory rhetoric’s of ‘China Now’ and other celebratory markers of China's global ascent in 2008. As well as the introductory article 'Dialogical Skirmishes', Tan also interviewed Hans Ulrich Obrist
Installation with moving image, digitally rendered textile, and a collection of black and white m... more Installation with moving image, digitally rendered textile, and a collection of black and white magic lantern slides. New commission for the Tate Britain / National Gallery Singapore iteration of 'Artist & Empire'
This was a 20 minute presentation at the panel discussion event "Grounded Conversations"... more This was a 20 minute presentation at the panel discussion event "Grounded Conversations", which marked the launch of the book "Come Cannibalise Us, Why Don’t You? / Sila Mengkanibalkan Kami MahuTak Erika Tan", edited by Erika Tan in 2014. Speaking remotely, out of time and place, mediated digitally, the figure of Halimah Binti Abdulla (an expert weaver who arrived in London from Malaya in 1924 to participate in the Malayan Pavilion in The Empire Exhibition) speaks for the absence of her author, the editor of the book and the maker of the works exhibited in the exhibition. She informs the audience of her new collaboration with the artist Erika Tan, and the nature of her work and life within the Empire Exhibition where she both lived and worked and eventually contracted pneumonia. Halima Binti Abdulla died in London and was buried within the Muslim section of Brookwood Cemetery. Her 'story' remains dispersed fragments within the footnotes of colonial history. Her grave is unmarked, her origins are contestable, she could however be seen as Singapore's first female cultural ambassador. This history is the basis of the artists' future collaborations
The exhibition included a version of a film installation made by Erika Tan for the Diaspora Pavil... more The exhibition included a version of a film installation made by Erika Tan for the Diaspora Pavilion at the Venice Biennale 2017. A Place in the World is an exhibition of photography and film by women artists at East Gallery NUA, timed to coincide with the Southbank Centre’s Women of the World (WoW) Festival, hosted in Norwich for the first time. The works in the exhibition have been assembled as an exploration of the relationship between place and female identity. Place can be taken as location, that of the artist and the subject of the work, or social place and how gender constructs a female artist’s place in society. Some of the works in the exhibition are self-portraits while others depict women that the artist has some kind of empathy with, the artist sometimes putting herself in their place. Reflection is used as a formal device by some of these artists, either through the photography of an image in a reflective surface, or in the case of a double screen video piece, to reflec...
Exhibited in the Diaspora Pavilion, Venice Biennale, May 10 to 26th Nov 2017. The ‘Forgotten’ Wea... more Exhibited in the Diaspora Pavilion, Venice Biennale, May 10 to 26th Nov 2017. The ‘Forgotten’ Weaver is an installation which assembles together for the Diaspora Pavilion in Venice, two video works from an ongoing project designed to establish a presence for Halimah-The-Empire-Exhibition-Weaver-Who-Died-Whilst-Demonstrating-Her-Craft. Halimah Binti Abdullah lived and performed in the Malayan Pavilion during the Empire Exhibition (Wembley, 1924) until her untimely demise and removal to her final resting place in an unmarked grave in Woking, UK. For this project, Tan employs a variety of positioned voices and media to foster a spectral return of this minor historical figure. The first video work, APA JIKA, The Mis-Placed Comma is a work in 3 parts commissioned by The National Gallery Singapore and filmed within its exhibitions spaces during the final stages of its transition from colonial period law courts to National Gallery. The video brings together a displaced, deconstructed and...
In Contesting British Chinese Culture, ed. Dr Diana Yeh and Dr Ashley Thorpe, published by Palgra... more In Contesting British Chinese Culture, ed. Dr Diana Yeh and Dr Ashley Thorpe, published by Palgrave (2018) including contributions from Dr. Susan Pui San Lok, Dr Katie Hill etc. 2018 From the publishers website: This is the first text to address British Chinese culture. It explores British Chinese cultural politics in terms of national and international debates on the Chinese diaspora, race, multiculture, identity and belonging, and transnational ‘Chineseness’. Collectively, the essays look at how notions of ‘British Chinese culture’ have been constructed and challenged in the visual arts, theatre and performance, and film, since the mid-1980s. They contest British Chinese invisibility, showing how practice is not only heterogeneous, but is forged through shifting historical and political contexts; continued racialization, the currency of Orientalist stereotypes and the possibility of their subversion; the policies of institutions and their funding strategies; and dynamic relationsh...
Lecture for Accumulations, Sediments, Dispersals: Artworks in Transit. Accumulations, Sediments, ... more Lecture for Accumulations, Sediments, Dispersals: Artworks in Transit. Accumulations, Sediments, Dispersals: Artworks in Transit organized by Kristina Pia Hofer, Eva Kernbauer and Marietta Kesting This workshop addresses the mobility of artworks: the tensions between their movement across borders, nations, cultures and formats, as well as their mobilizing effects in aesthetic, political, social and economic realms. While post-mediality and digitalization suggest limitless fluidity across formats and geographies, effortless transmission and reception, these views are contested by postcolonial perspectives that call attention to the lingering unequal distribution of (material and immaterial) resources, and by the ongoing institutional and economical valorization of artworks as objects tied to their material substance.
What happens to symbols of cultural dominance when the world-order shifts? Set in Saltram House, ... more What happens to symbols of cultural dominance when the world-order shifts? Set in Saltram House, an English country house (now National Trust property), the film takes place ‘some point in the not so distant future’, at a moment in time when China’s ascendance as a global power has given rise to an opportunity to re-visit history differently. Using a mixture of documentary and narrative film tropes, the cut and paste aesthetics of hip hop and chinoiserie; the history of Saltram House as we know it, under-goes a slippery transition in an attempt to remain relevant and shore-up its status as cultural capital. Sensing Obscurity I: The Manor House; English Literature; artefacts and the performativity of objects; contrapuntal readings; and looking inwards backwards. Duration: 28.31min Medium: 2-channel HDV projection, 4 track audio, looped Sensing Obscurity II: Chinese Chippendale Duration: 1.30min Medium: streamed video with bootleg DVD Sensing Obscurity III: After Chinoiserie Version I...
... Erika Tan's latest work, 'Pidgin: Interrupted Transmission', is a complex and ... more ... Erika Tan's latest work, 'Pidgin: Interrupted Transmission', is a complex and ambitious project which appears to take as its starting point the task of defining and locating the origins of 'pidgin English'. ... 'Do you translate by eye or by ear?' asks Trinh T. Minh-ha, elsewhere. ...
Unfolding over a period of three weeks is a special project by London based, Artist-in-Residence ... more Unfolding over a period of three weeks is a special project by London based, Artist-in-Residence Erika Tan (Singapore). Focusing on the forgotten historical figure of Halimah the Malay weaver, Tan will revive her through a series of footnotes and instigate a process of collective labour towards the understanding that history is an effort built by many. Halimah lived and worked with 19 other Malayans in the 1924 Empire Exhibition in London essentially engaging not only in the production of woven material but also symbolically reproducing Britain’s capital (its colonial subjects). During the day Halimah demonstrated her craft and sold products on one side of the Malayan Pavilion and at night lived behind the displays, cooking, eating and performing everyday life. This project seeks to liberate Halimah from her textual existence and re-insert her into a contemporary dialogue around nation, art and value – or place, labour, capital. The Lab will be used in a triad of layers – as an exhi...
The presentation revolves around two connected works: Come Cannibalize Us, Why Don’t You? and Apa... more The presentation revolves around two connected works: Come Cannibalize Us, Why Don’t You? and Apa Jika, The Mis-placed Comma. Both projects discuss practices of collecting and display in the context of colonial and post-colonial museums and explore possible points of re-entry for the fugitive or rogue object. Come Cannibalize Us, Why Don’t You? is an artistic response that re-visits the artifacts and writings from an exhibition shown at the NUS Museum. Apa Jika, The Mis-placed Comma focuses on the ‘forgotten’ figure of a Malayan weaver in the British Empire Exhibition in 1924. The work was commissioned for the inaugural launch of Singapore’s National Gallery, and is currently exhibited in The Diaspora Pavilion, Venice. Both artworks engage with the tropes and traps involved in representation, and the transnational entanglements of moving objects and people.
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