Installation View of Yeo Workshop. Image Courtesy: Yeo Workshop
Art Dubai is back this week. Before it opens to the public on Friday, The National goes behind the scenes for a sneak peek at what to expect.
The contemporary section, meanwhile, is hosting 70 gallery booths representing countries and artists from the UAE, Palestine, India and Lebanon, to name a few. The section provides insight into specificities, trends and practices that are unfolding in different parts of the world.
Yeo Workshop from Singapore is presenting an exhibition of six artists from South-East Asia. The artists span several generations, presenting new twists to age-old crafts or imagining new frontiers to art that combine the physical and digital realms.
Citra Sasmita’s embroidery Realm of Nothingness, for instance, reflects on Hindu scriptures and artworks. Featuring exclusively figures of women, the Balinese artist tacitly points out that many of the traditional works are bereft of female representation. “Citra is an emerging artist, and she’s currently showing at the Diriyah Biennale in Saudi Arabia,” Charmaine Kok, gallery associate at Yeo Workshop, says. “A lot of the paintings that she references, as well as the Hindu scriptures, mainly only depict men and their heroic stories. But where are the women? She's including women in those narratives.” The embroidery is a departure from the paintings that Sasmita is known for, but that is the reason that Kok said Yeo Workshop sought to bring it to Art Dubai.
Realm of Nothingness is in harmony with its adjacent work, a textile piece by Santi Wangchuan. The Thai artist reflects on the traditions of weaving nets. Kok adds: “It’s kind of dying craft and he’s one of the last people trying to protect it and is teaching people to continue to use traditional techniques.” The work is vibrant with colour and features dangled interwoven synthetic materials. “He uses recycled clothing that he got from his neighbourhood,” Kok says.
Among the most arresting works at the booth is Brandon Tay’s Model B: Orchid Mantis, a 3D-printed sculpture that blends the forms of an orchid and a mantis. The artwork is also fitted with an LCD that features a dynamic video loop. The Orchid Mantis is one of several characters Tay has created, each with their own Wikipedia page that dives into their intersecting stories. “He's thinking of what happens if we cross the DNA of different species,” Kok says. “This digital element in the middle, the video, is almost like the spirit of the creature.”
