Past Talk
In Dialogue with Suzann Victor, Penny Siopis & Martin Guinard-Terrin | Moderated by Clément Delépine 08.05.2021
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Event has ended
8 May 2021, Saturday
5PM – 6PM
Zoom
About The Public Programme
Suzann Victor, South African artist Penny Siopis, and co-curator of the 12th Taipei Biennial ‘You and I Don’t Live on the Same Planet’ Martin Guinard-Terrin spoke on the artists’ contribution for RHE. The discussion was moderated by Galleries Curate coordinator Clément Delépine. With a focus on Victor’s Fire Water (2021) as well as Siopis’ She Breathes Water (2019) and Obscure White Messenger (2010), the speakers will share their thoughts on the mutability of perception. From a bodily to planetary scale, the discussion will flow between the micro and macro perspectives that the works inspire, such as getting deep in touch with your sensorial capabilities, to the ecological urgency of the state of Earth today. The discussion will also touch on non-human actants to defamiliarise our normative modes of perception, and what that can offer in re-thinking how history is written.
Watch the recording of the talk here.
About the artist
Suzann Victor
Residencies in 2014, 2017, 2022, 2024
Suzann Victor (b. 1959, Singapore, based in Sydney, Australia) works with performance, installation and painting to critically examine human perception, sensory experiences and natural phenomena. Recognised as a leading figure in Singapore’s contemporary art scene, Victor was the concept developer of the nation’s first artist-run initiative, 5th Passage, in the 1990s, and was the first female artist to represent Singapore at the Venice Biennale in 2001.
Victor uses a combination of readymade objects and materials drawn from the body and nature such as water, glass, light and movement. Her work often transforms exhibition sites into immersive environments, inviting viewers to use their own bodies and senses as investigative tools for encountering their surroundings. Still Waters (1998), a performance that interrogated structures of power particularly during a decade-long ban on performance art in Singapore, saw the artist interacting with ankle-deep water along a narrow drain passage in the Singapore Art Museum, sealed off by a retrofitted glass facade. In Rainbow Circle (2013), Victor engineered the appearance of double rainbows within the National Museum of Singapore, intimating their future as an endangered ecological relic to reflect on the urgency of environmental action.
Victor obtained her Diploma of Fine Art in Painting from LASALLE College of the Arts, Singapore in 1990, and her BFA, MFA and PhD in Visual Art from the Western Sydney University, Sydney in 1997, 2000 and 2008 respectively. Her work is held in many collections including the Singapore Art Museum, Singapore; the Australian High Commission in Singapore, Singapore; and Western Sydney University, Sydney.
Notable exhibitions include SUNSHOWER (2017), National Art Center, Tokyo & Mori Art Museum, Tokyo; Höhenrausch (2014), OK Center for Contemporary Art, Linz; Modern Love (2014), Institute of Contemporary Art, Singapore; Thermokline of Art (2007), ZKM Center of Art & Media, Karlsruhe; Interrogating Time (2006), National Museum of Singapore, Singapore; High Tide (2006), Zacheta National Gallery of Art, Warsaw. The artist has also participated in major international festivals including the 9th Triennial of Contemporary Prints (2018), Museum of Fine Arts Le Locle; If the World Changed (2013), 4th Singapore Biennale; Turn and Widen (2008), 5th Seoul International Media Art Biennale; Handle With Care (2008), 9th Adelaide Biennale; Fever Variations (2006), 6th Gwangju Biennale; Plateau of Humankind (2001), 49th Venice Biennale; Collective Memories (1997), 6th Havana Biennale; and APT2 (1996), 2nd Asia Pacific Triennial, Brisbane.
Victor has had residencies at the STPI Workshop in 2014, 2017, 2022 and 2024. Her 2014 residency resulted in the exhibition Imprint (2015), and her 2022 and 2024 residencies resulted in the exhibition Constellations (2025).
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