Arts Picks: Check out three shows by female artists this weekend
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(Clockwise from left) Artist Jane Lee's Nowhere (2018), Tayeba Begum Lipi's Lost (2019), and Resting (2021).
PHOTOS: KEN CHEONG, SUNDARAM TAGORE GALLERY
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Tayeba Begum Lipi: Melancholy
Bangladeshi artist Tayeba Begum Lipi’s early sculptures of razor blades are a reference to a tool commonly used in childbirth in her home country as well as a symbol of oppression against women there.
For Melancholy, her latest exhibition in Singapore, she looks at a different kind of oppression – derived from being a mother, as she did recently. Forced into lockdown during the pandemic, she also began to examine her immediate environment and its mundane quality.
Her sculptures on show – now made of custom manufactured stainless steel razor blades instead of store-bought ones – are of baby shoes, strollers, buttons and sewing machine parts.
But unlike her earlier acclaimed sculpture of a matrimonial bed, called Love Bed (2012), also made of razor blades, her latest works are more subtle.
Also part of the exhibition are six hand-embroidered drawings. It was a time-consuming project that the artist felt she needed to undertake as a way to refocus her mind by engaging in a deliberative and slow-paced art-making process.
Where: Sundaram Tagore Gallery, 01-05 Gillman Barracks, 5 Lock Road
MRT: Labrador Park
When: Saturday to March 4. Tuesdays to Fridays, 11am to 6pm, Saturdays, 11am to 7pm
Admission: Free
A New World: Yayoi Kusama, Niki de Saint Phalle
Artist Yayoi Kusama’s I Carry On Living With The Pumpkins (2014) (left), and I am Upside Down, Green, (Remembering) (1997).
PHOTOS: OPERA GALLERY SINGAPORE
Japanese artist Yayoi Kusama, 93, and the late French-American artist Niki de Saint Phalle – born just a year apart – are considered pioneering women artists in a world of contemporary art mostly dominated by men.
Both also suffered childhood trauma and abuse and, in some ways, survived their ordeals through their art.
Kusama has been open about her struggle with mental health issues. In an interview in 2012, she said: “I fight pain, anxiety and fear every day, and the only method I have found that relieved my illness is to keep creating art.”
For a month from Friday, more than 30 works by her and de Saint Phalle will be on show at Opera Gallery Singapore and the public will be able to see similarities in their art – most notably in the use of bright colours and naive forms that suggest fantasy, joy and a childlike innocence.
Where: Opera Gallery Singapore, 02-16 Ion Orchard, 2 Orchard Turn
MRT: Orchard
When: Friday to Feb 5, 11am to 8pm daily
Admission: Free
Jane Lee: To Begin Again
Artist Jane Lee’s artwork, Alpha and Omega (2022), acrylic on fibreglass, at Primz Gallery.
PHOTO: KEN CHEONG
Primz Gallery, a private art space established by art collectors Linda Neo and Albert Lim, is presenting artworks by Singapore artist Jane Lee from the founders’ collections.
There are 10 works in this not-for-sale exhibition and a highlight is an installation called Nowhere (2018) – a large, shimmering work primarily consisting of mirrored tiles and reflective vinyl stickers.
In the exhibition catalogue, curator Tan Siuli describes it as a “liminal threshold, a non-place, but also a now-here, collapsing notions of multiple temporalities and realms”.
Nowhere was originally commissioned as a site-specific work for a museum.
Another highlight is a painting titled Alpha and Omega (2022), a black-and-white acrylic on fibreglass work with a deep gash made by the artist that appears to stop suddenly.
Ms Tan says of the work: “After it had formed itself into a single, bold line, Lee decided that no further action was needed to complete the painting – its beginning was also its end.”
Where: Primz Gallery, 08-15 Primz Bizhub, 21 Woodlands Close
MRT: Admiralty
When: Saturday and Jan 14, noon to 3pm both days
Admission: Free
