Together with gallerist Audrey Yeo, Cartier brought together an intimate group of artists, collectors and art enthusiasts for an evening of camaraderie, conversation and celebration in support of women and art.
"I like sewing; I like ironing; I like cleaning the house,” declared Noor Mahnun Mohamed, to much laughter from guests at the Cartier Art Patron Society Dinner on March 20, in celebration of International Women’s Month. The Malaysian artist, who is better known as Anum, was sharing how her art is informed by “the things I like; the things I like to do”. Her largely figurative body of work, in particular paintings, reflects domestic scenes and still life that fuses elements of realism, allegory and the whimsical.
Anum let on, “When I paint, I don’t think of myself as a female artist. [I’m] also not trying to tell a story; my painting doesn’t carry a message. The empowerment I feel is through me being able to paint [what] I feel is visually intelligible, or articulating the grammar of a painting.”
Such is the power of art that also resonates with the other women on the panel—Yanina Novitskaya, the chief executive officer of Cartier Southeast Asia and Oceania, and art collector Krystina Lyon—put together and moderated by gallerist Audrey Yeo, the founder of contemporary art gallery Yeo Workshop and president of the Art Galleries Association Singapore.
“Art definitely is a language that’s universal for everyone,” enthused Novitskaya. “When we talk about art, everyone’s thinking about investment but it relates to Cartier’s own—it’s an investment to ourselves. We always take art as a great inspiration for us. We invite like-minded, progressive-thinking people to our ecosystem to energise ourselves, to inspire each other, and to support each other.” ...