The Padang Sessions

Welcome to Padang Spotlights, a series of special episodes uncovering the rich histories of Southeast Asian artists and art spaces through archives and exclusive interviews. In this spotlight, a quiet encounter with "Crossing " (1964) at the National Gallery Singapore leads curator Teo Hui Min into a years-long search into the life of Lai Foong Moi (b. 1931, d. 1994) — the first Malayan-born woman...

Artist Haryadi Suadi grew up in Cirebon on the northern coast of Java. The port city was famous for its long history of oceanic trade and rich material culture, including glass painting, a medium that Suadi worked with throughout his artistic career. In 1959, Suadi enrolled at the art school in Bandung, joining Ahmad Sadali and A.D. Pirous. He worked intensively with printmaking before working wit...

Written by Kenneth M. George and Mamannoor in 2002, ‘A.D. Pirous: Vision, Faith, and A Journey in Indonesian Art, 1955-2002’ is a thorough survey of artist A.D. Pirous’s life, works and artistic practice that was born out of the long-term collaboration and friendship between A.D. Pirous and George. The book details A.D. Pirous’s stories on aspects of his life and artistic journey, highlighting his...

Welcome to Padang Spotlights! These special episodes are dedicated to unearthing our archives to bring to life the rich narratives of Southeast Asian artists and art spaces.  In this spotlight, our researcher and host Tan Yen Peng traces the legacy of female artist and educator Sun Yee (b. 1919, d. 2010), a pivotal but lesser-known figure in Singapore’s early art scene. As the former head of...

Can we conceive of exhibitions as a medium? Are exhibitions only neutral spaces for the display of artworks, or do they have agency as an aesthetic, contested and epistemic site Can we conceptualise the exhibition as a medium that generates new ways of thinking about and making art?  When talking about methodology, there is a dilemma in terms of how we can develop approaches to study exhibiti...

Bringing together Malaysia-based American artist Ray Lagenbach, Filipino artist and musician Kaloy Olavides and the Indonesian film historian David Hanan, this panel sought to explore the intersections between performance and time-based media which emerged during the 1970s which have largely been left outside the ambit of current art histories in Southeast Asia. Through the diverse perspectives an...

Digital access to collections is an important function of many Southeast Asian art archives. As digital resources and nodes for peer-to-peer sharing, these archives play an important role in seeding new research and cultivating a regional historical consciousness. Focusing on the Southeast Asia Performance Collection and Indonesia Visual Art Archive as case studies, curators Annie Jael Kwan and Fa...

Join Joel Sherwood-Spring, Simon Soon and Tammy Nguyen as they advocate for open-access knowledge. This session explored different strategies for reclaiming and granting greater access to knowledge. From institutional partnerships, to leveraging the public domains of specific nations, and to the individual labour involved in creating resource guides and artworks, this panel delved into the techniq...

“SEMBUH” is an expanded version of Kamal Sabran’s Ssegar Angin performance, presented at the Venice Biennale in April 2022. Based on Kamal’s sound therapy research on performance as a method for Malay traditional healing, the project offered an alternative take on the revitalisation of the angin (wind) transpiring within the panggung (physical space) through an immersive sound and dance experience...

Welcome to Padang Spotlights ! These special episodes are dedicated to unearthing our archives to bring to life the rich narratives of Southeast Asian artists and art spaces. In this spotlight, Gallery curator Cheng Jia Yun continues her research journey following her curation of well-loved Singaporean artist Chng Seok Tin’s exhibition Drawn Through a Press (2021). Through intimate conversations w...

This lecture performance by artists Zarina Muhammad and Tini Aliman draws from and unfolds from fragments from each of the auto-ethnographic aspects of Zarina and Tini's respective practice. The performance was presented as part visual conversation, part pragmatic prayer, part eulogy, part temporal installation that traverses the hiding places of love, grief and queer spirits, the soundscapes of t...

Desire is both powerful and fundamental. In old Siam, the expression of desire in words and pictures was open, celebratory and humorous. Among non-elite women, sexuality was seen as a strength and was something that was not confined to the young. Royals were portrayed as passionate. However, modernity brought about change. Some sought to deny the power of desire and to limit its expression, and fe...

“To be an artist is ... just like shit in a clogged toilet, stubborn shit that can’t decide whether it wants to be flushed or to stick around…” Composed as an irreverent dialogue between masculine and feminine narrators, this book of essays by Araya Rasdjarmrearnsook is an uncategorisable fusion of art criticism, feminist theory, art pedagogy, gossip and autofiction. This first English translation...

Photography has been seen on the walls of the art museum since the 1930s. However, since then, questions have continued to be raised as to what sort of photography and whose photography should be collected and displayed? The role of photography within an art museum is often complicated by its varied, multiple roles in daily life – its non-art functions, which have caused confusion, arguments and s...

"An Uncommon History of the Common Fence" is a research project that suggests that the common fence—often used as a protective safety urban device or as a boundary marker demarcating permissible and non-permissible movement—has had an uncommon history within the biography of Singapore. The fence is so commonplace within the urban environment that it recedes from active vision. In fact, the common...

To dwell on the questions concerning Islam and Islamic religiosity/spirituality is to acknowledge its position in mainstream art historical narratives and museological practices. Islam is rarely discussed in this largely secular field and the circles of modern and contemporary art. There are only a few scholarships on art in Southeast Asia that address the continuing role of Islam in the region's...

In this episode, art historian Jeffrey Say explores one of the most important phases in the development of Singapore’s modern art history—the 1950s to the 1970s. This period saw the emergence of distinctive movements like the Nanyang Style, visual imagery that drew from the lives and struggles of the common people, and the first sculpture show in Singapore. This session was held in July 2017 at Na...

Founder and editor of the Indonesian magazine Tempo , Goenawan Mohamad recalls one of Indonesia’s most cherished poets, Chairil Anwar, and offers perspectives on possible genealogies that have constituted modern Southeast Asian literary production since the 1950s.    This session was held in December 2018 as part of the symposium How Easily Modernism Could be Disturbed in conjunctio...

Writer and literary translator Pauline Fan traces the literary frontiers in Latiff Mohidin’s travel writings and poetry from the 1960s in this conversation with Gallery Director of ILHAM Gallery Rahel Joseph. This session was held in December 2018 as part of the symposium How Easily Modernism Could be Disturbed in conjunction with the exhibition Latiff Mohidin: Pago Pago (1960-1969) . This tr...

Co-curators of the Nam June Paik exhibition Rudolf Frieling (of SFMOMA) and Sook-Kyung Lee (of Tate Modern) briefly trace Paik’s legacy by focusing on some of his key works. They also address multiple intersecting narratvies of music and performance, collaboration and artistic networks as well as transnational interests and trajectories. This talk was held online on the Gallery's YouTube and Faceb...

Roger Nelson (Assistant Professor at Nanyang Technological University and Curator) and Seng Yu Jin (Deputy Director, Curatorial & Exhibitions, National Gallery Singapore) discuss how we can account for the allure of the exotic in depictions of crowds in Southeast Asian places and people through Louis Rollet’s Market at Memot and U Ba Nyan’s At the Jetty .  This talk was held online on Zoo...

Associate Professor of History Dr Timothy P. Barnard (National University of Singapore) explores how animals fit into colonial society in Singapore, an aspect of the period’s history that is often overlooked. While animals no doubt played an important role in everyday life by providing transportation, labour and food, they also symbolically represented the colonisation of nature. They were used as...

Architecture historian Dr Lai Chee Kien examines murals and architecture produced during the heady years just before and after independence in Singapore and Malaysia from 1945 to 1969, and also into the 1970s. This talk was recorded live in March 2020 at National Gallery Singapore as part of the programming for Suddenly Turning Visible: Art and Architecture in Southeast Asia (1969–1989) . Disclaim...

Former Director of the Tate, Sir Nicholas Serota discusses the implications of significant shifts in the way art museums work with artists and how they engage with the public, with special reference to the evolution of Tate. This talk was recorded live in October 2018 at National Gallery Singapore . Disclaimer: The comments and opinions expressed are those of the speaker/s, and do not represent th...

Senior Lecturer of History Dr Donna Brunero (National University of Singapore) explores how the material culture of the port city and representations of an idealised Asian trading emporium, became important ways of considering Asia in the 1880s. This talk was recorded live in September 2019 at National Gallery Singapore in association with the Art in Singapore  programme series. Disclaimer: T...