Body Translations; Material Transformations, 2024

COLLABORATION WITH SONIA KWEK & MARC KOO, NATIONAL GALLERY SINGAPORE

"Body Translations; Material Transformations"
2024
Rattan, mild steel weldings of text from Audre Lorde's "The Cancer Journals", Japanese denim
A work-in-progress movement study performance collaboration by Sonia Kwek, Marc Khoo and Yanyun Chen, Kelysha Cheah binte Mohamed Kassim and Lenette Lua of National Gallery Singapore, held on 7th December 2024. Photographs courtesy of National Gallery Singapore and Joseph Nair.

Under the invitation of curators Lenette Lua and Kelysha Cheah binte Mohamed Kassim for the In-Gallery Session held at National Gallery Singapore, we crafted a movement study participatory session "Body Translations; Material Transformations" in response to two works: Malaysian sculptor Raja Aziddin Raja Shahriman's small totems "Killing Tools" (1994) and Thai artist @pinareesanpitak 's monumental sketch"Smiling Body" (1997).

Scrap metal and gold leaf, small sculptures and large painting, pubescent and maternal, killing tools and smiling body. The space within these juxtapositions are rich, textured and densely black. They reflected the complexities of human experience, and a sheer reluctance to reduce and simplify bodily potential. I read them as a wrestle within discipline and disciplining, where good intentions and traumatic experience collide. A path restricted is also a creative path forward, and what can matter more than to dance on, above and with the scars of recovery.

How would scars, discipline, dress, armour, body and movement intersect? What began as two separate projects on family stories: Scar Writings & Rotan Rattan came together under the careful, intelligent and strong mind of performance, movement and body artist Sonia Kwek, founder of Trace Life Drawing, who saw the weight of scars as an armour to be worn alongside the rattan corset I had been weaving at @dblspce earlier in October. Fashion designer Marc Koo had been showing me the ways of making corsets in NYC, and with his delicate skills in patterning sewing knitting, pulled off a hakama-inspired jeans pants to complete the visuals for the performing body. The notions of constriction, protection and persistence holding a body within and down came to life as Sonia moved through the interweaving spaces at National Gallery Singapore.

A metal slip transforms from scars to language to scroll to armour to bridge. It happens when our body and minds decide to see and interpret them in different ways, enhancing or diminishing the force it weighs upon us.

I leaned heavily on Audre Lorde for this version of scar writings, the reason behind it was because she wrote about her keloid scars in "The Cancer Journals" about her breast cancer journey. Every word written and read was a flame lit in me, and from somewhere in the earth came an anger channeled from my toes to my eyebrows risen by the might that is Audre Lorde.

This is rage as life-force, as fuel, as exorcism.

Led by artists Yanyun Chen and Sonia Kwek, this participatory session invites you to reflect on the relationship between art and life, delving into the themes of care, pain, love and fear evoked in Raja Aziddin Raja Shahriman’s "Killing Tools" (1994) series and Pinaree Sanpitak’s "Smiling Body" (1997).

For "Killing Tools", the Malaysian sculptor Raja Aziddin Raja Shahriman forged scrapped automobile parts into weaponry, animating them with martial arts movements from silat. The implements recall skeletal forms or small totems, which simultaneously evoke humankind’s destructive forces and spirits of protection and guardianship. Presented in contrast to the dueling intensity of "Killing Tools" is Thai artist Pinaree Sanpitak’s monumental and autobiographical "Smiling Body", a vision of a vessel for life-giving and life-birthing.

Read comparatively, the two works frame a dialogue about the full spectrum of human experience—the capacity for both joy and suffering. The artists will further this dialogue through a dynamic interplay of movement, sound, drawing, and weaving. Using rattan as a medium, they probe the histories and emotions embedded within the works to reveal a space where creation and destruction, comfort and anguish, converge.

*The closing sharing and discussion that was held as part of this programme was not uploaded to maintain the privacy of the participants.

About the Artists

Dr. Yanyun Chen (b. 1986) is a visual artist and educator. Her practice untangles aesthetic, cultural, and technological anatomies, unravelling notions of embodiment and inheritances. She wrestles with questions: what intergenerational weight has been carried in our bodies; how have our families marked us; which bones scaffold our knowledge of the world? Exhibiting internationally, and recipient of prestigious awards including the Singapore National Arts Council Young Artist Award (2020), ArtOutreach IMPART Visual Artist Award (2019), and SAM President’s Young Talents People’s Choice Award (2018), Chen holds a PhD from the European Graduate School, MA in Communications, and BFA in Animation.

Sonia Kwek works with performance, movement and the body. She performs, facilitates, directs, choreographs, dramaturges, writes and produces across varying spaces, including stage performances, site-specific responses, mocap-animated digital experiences, and others. Informed by theatrical worldbuilding and Butoh techniques, her work explores corporeal sensualities, myths/archetypes and the latent unseen to deal with questions about embodiment, gender, and perception. Often involving collaboration and transdisciplinary experimentation, Sonia seeks to centre the expression and experience of the intimate, visceral and erotic. In 2024, her short film ‘hard boil, soft centre’ was selected for Asian Film Archive’s SG Shorts, Ngilngig Asian Fantastic Film Festival (PH) and CreateART’s Dance Film Night (NY). Sonia started the platform ‘trace life drawing’, a space for life drawing and performance to intersect, organising artist-led workshops and sessions featuring performers as models. - About 'In-Gallery Sessions' In-Gallery Sessions invites you to collectively reflect on art and life by questioning and exchanging ideas on artworks in our collection. Together with artists, curators, and cultural practitioners, these intimate sessions will be occasions for contemplation and imagination.