National University of Singapore

The Sufi and the Bearded Man:
Re-membering a Keramat in Contemporary Singapore

Till 6 May 2012
NUS Museum
Free Admission

This exhibition re-members the keramat of a 19th century Sufi traveler from the Middle East who lives on in contemporary Singapore through her miracles and her shrine which was recently removed. Re-membering the keramat has involved a two-year long project of collaborating with Ali, an intermediary of the Sufi and custodian of the masoleum referred to by fellow devotees as "the bearded man". These conversations culminated in the keramat and its life-worlds entering a museum, a transition animated by the display of photographic evidence, material remains or artifacts, anecdotal histories and related documents. Considering alternative ways to recount and understand heritage, The Sufi and the Bearded Man, calls attention to devotional culture, lesser-heard narratives and esotericism in Singapore.

[Image credit: Nurul Huda, Singapore 2010]

Family Intimacies

Till 8 April 2012
NUS Museum
Free Admission

Family Intimacies by photographers Anderson & Low is a visual documentation of Edwin Low’s global family. While the project serves as a tribute to the Low family, it brings into light the different themes of memory, place, and identity.

Using photography as the main medium of discourse, this exhibition introduces not just ritualistic and site-specific content – portraits of family members in respective homes; places in China; ethnographic images of a funeral procession – but also displays the process of ‘unpacking’ the family as a concept – its stories, memory, archival photos – and how this alludes to larger themes of memory and history-making.

Family Intimacies also mirrors our understanding and thus consumption of how we begin to view our own family trees. In mapping out the Low family tree, this exhibition features the personal and the conceptual facets of what make up the idea of ‘family’, both in the present and in the remembering.

Writing Power: Zulkifli Yusoff

Till 19 Feb 2012
NUS Museum
Free Admission

Regarded as a pioneer of installation art in Malaysia, Zulkifli Yusoff’s Writing Power looks at how historical texts affect cultural memory and understandings of nationhood. Exploring how history can be made relevant to contemporary times, Zulkifili’s artistic renditions draw upon the fascinating and complex relationship between the visual and the written - leading his audiences to ponder, if it matters not-knowing what art means, who made it, when, what’s it called, or how to approach it?

Writing Power is held as a companion to the ongoing exhibition Camping and Tramping Through the Colonial Archive: The Museum in Malaya, which explores the rise of the museum and themes on the archives in British Malaya from the 19th century onwards and how contemporary practitioners may lay claim to it.

[Image: Zulkifili Yusoff, Pelayaran Munsyi Abdullah (detail), 2003, Mixed Media. Aliya and Farouk Khan Collection]

Calendars 2020-2096

Till 12 Feb 2012
NUS Museum
Free Admission

Calendars (2020-2096) comprises of 1,001 images of deserted public interiors in Singapore photographed over a span of 7 years (2004-2010). It signals specific concerns of Heman Chong's practice, one that can be located in the intersection between time, space and situation. The 'archive' of images, set within the premise of how one marks time, generates an imaginary meandering within the interiors of Singapore, a city that is constantly being remade, often appropriating signs and styles from a wide spectrum of influences. Based on a series of revisitations to the public spaces that Chong has a prior relationship to - shopping centers, museums, MRT stations, schools - the artist carefully frames the spaces without attempting to add any new meaning to the space. No permission was requested for any of the photographs captured, nor any prior arrangement was made to have it devoid of people. Thus, the photographs veer less towards the staged, but rather can be seen as ready-mades. Yet this appropriation very quickly transmutes into another creature: one of fiction and narrative. The project can be viewed in its entirety as a novel about interior spaces, as well as, a historical (also a kind of imaginary fiction) document of interior spaces.

Working the Tropical Garden

Till 6 Nov 2011
NUS Museum
Free Admission

Asian Symphony, Ng Eng Teng’s largest known public mural measuring 1.8 x 9 m, was commissioned for the Garden Hotel in 1971. Conceived in an era when Singapore was beginning to emphasise environmental planning as the key to sustainable development, the mural is an idealised expression of man’s synergistic relationship with nature. It was recently donated to the NUS Museum and is now installed at National University Health System building at Kent Ridge.

This exhibition brings together working sketches and a maquette which were part of Ng’s preparatory work for the mural, as well as other materials which elucidate the artist’s articulation and treatment of the figure. The displays complement the Museum’s permanent exhibition Sculpting Life: The Ng Eng Teng Collection, allowing a survey of key thematic and formal interests which the artist had explored since the 1960s.

[Image: Ng Eng Teng, Asian Symphony (detail), 1971, Ciment Fondu]

Click here for the exhibition brochure in PDF format.