SINGAPORE – For adventurous art seekers planning to ditch the mainland and ride the ferry to catch the final weeks of Natasha on the Southern Islands, let serendipity – and your surroundings – be your guide.

Artworks for the Singapore Biennale are dispersed over eight locations on St John’s Island and Lazarus Island, and are easily located by following the coastline where the ferry docks at either jetty.

The works range from collective Nina bell F’.s miniature Fermentation House that dot the islands to Singaporean artist Zarina Muhammad’s three-part installation overlooking the swimming lagoon on St John’s.

Last Saturday, Natasha On The Islands delivered a day of programmes including artist talks, gamelan performances and storytelling sessions on the two connected islands.

But many visitors – especially in the morning, where programming was lighter – found their way to the art through their senses.

Singapore-based software engineer Himanshu, 34, who took his family from India to visit the Southern Islands, was lured to Zarina’s Moving Earth, Crossing Water, Eating Soil. Striking angklung-like tones were generated by the constant breeze that sifted through the work’s wind instruments that morning.

He says: “It feels very welcoming and unexpected. Even when we could not see the work, we followed the sound.”

Zarina’s mixed-media installation is the highlight of the artworks. Materials such as animal cutouts and divination cards are arranged in a shrine-like composition under a pavillion. Responding to the site, her work invites islandgoers to notice the landscape and recall its histories.

One divination card, The Pragmatic Prayer represented by The Cat, reads: “Locate all the jetties on this island. One of them is said to be built on and with corals. One of them was used as a passageway for the dead who could not be buried on the island.”

It is not just the cerebral but also the sensorial that Zarina seeks to engage. The 41-year-old artist told The Straits Times: “Creating work on the island offers that space where we can drop into our bodies. We can feel the itch, the discomfort, the breeze, the joy and the horror of being in an outdoor space and not an air-conditioned space.”

Kancil Mengadap Beringin (The Mousedeer Comes Before The Banyan Tree) by Malaysian artist Shooshie Sulaiman, 50, was unveiled in its entirety last Saturday at Lazarus Island. First displayed at the Malay Heritage Centre in 2019, the work has been relocated while the centre is being revamped. Talks are ongoing for it to be permanently housed on Lazarus.

A visitor of about eight, who spotted the 99 animal cement sculptures from the adjacent Lazarus Island Beach, ran towards the work declaring to her mother in Mandarin: “These are sheep.” 

Had she read the accompanying text, she would have learnt that the creatures were mousedeer – the witty animal from Malay fables. They are crowded around a banyan tree which, in Malay cosmology, marks the liminal space between the spiritual and the human.

The current installation adds a wooden structure that mimics the central living banyan tree with poles that descend like aerial roots around the mousedeer.

In the evening, a rapt audience gathered by the work to hear storyteller Aida Arosoaie read from Shooshie’s children’s book. The story, also titled Kancil Mengadap Beringin, was inspired by Shooshie’s daughter Siddra Melati.

Shoosie’s introduction of South-east Asian ecology and folklore is part of her attempt to help children “look at nature as a more interesting and mysterious entity”. 

For visitors who wish to engage with Natasha and its artists, look out for updates on the Singapore Biennale website for new programmes leading up to the end of the Biennale on March 19.

The other way to enjoy the publicly accessible art is simply to get on the ferry and wander. The art, after all, invites visitors to ponder the larger installations which are the islands themselves in all their ecological, historical and speculative glory.

Book It/Natasha at St John’s Island and Lazarus Island

Where: St John’s Island and Lazarus Island; ferries leave from Sentosa Jetty @ Cove, 1 Cove Avenue
When: Till March 19
Admission: Two-way ferry tickets at $20 (adult), $15 (child below 12), and $64 (family of four). Free for children two and below.
Info: For updated ferry schedules, go to www.singaporebiennale.org/venue/st-john-s-island-and-lazarus-island