Past Talk
In Dialogue with Heman Chong & Kathleen Ditzig 20.02.2021
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Event has ended
20 February 2021, Saturday
About The Public Programme
Heman Chong has been described as an archetypal conceptual artist. Yet, with an expansive practice that has included the making of texts, objects, installations, and situations, and seen Chong take on at different times the various roles of writer, curator and artist, his practice escapes any simple categorisation.
Organised on the occasion of Chong’s first solo exhibition at STPI “Peace Prosperity And Friendship With All Nations”, this artist talk will see Chong speak to the diverse forms of his practice and the urgencies that have defined his work. As part of his presentation, Chong will perform Words, They, Wrote, a performance based upon texts written by other artists and accompanied by slides that contextualise the texts.
Words, They, Wrote, which is always deliberately performed within a symposium, lecture, panel discussion or exhibition space, encapsulates the complex entanglements between text, image and meaning-making. Chong sees the performance as an expanding series of proposals for imaginary exhibitions. For Chong, the list of texts is never complete. There will always be more words written and said. Just as no two artist talks – even by the same artist – are ever the same, no two performances are ever the same.
About the artist
Heman Chong
Residencies in 2006, 2020, 2023
Heman Chong (b. 1977, Muar, Malaysia, based in Singapore) is an artist, curator and writer whose practice investigates everyday behaviours and infrastructure to reveal how social constructs and power structures are woven into daily life. Further informed by an interest in how individuals and communities might imagine the future, he frequently employs science fiction as a metaphorical device and narrative approach.
Chong works across images, performances, situations and texts, in manners that shift between solemn and intimate, deliberate and accidental. Monument to the people we have conveniently forgotten (I hate you) (2008) is a site-specific installation comprising one million blacked out business cards strewn across the exhibition floor. Referencing the customary gesture of exchanging personal details in business relations, it acts loosely as a memorial for forgotten individuals while highlighting fleeting social connections. In Foreign Affairs (2018), Chong captures photographs of unassuming embassy backdoors—the spatial and symbolic threshold where discrete entries, or ‘slippages’, occur. Systematically repeated, the images resemble surveillance footage, leading the viewer to study the activity around the doors.
The artist obtained his Diploma in Visual Communications from Temasek Polytechnic, Singapore in 1997, and his MA in Communication Art and Design from the Royal College of Art, London in 2002. His work is held in numerous collections including Art Sonje Center, Seoul; Kadist Art Foundation, Paris; M+, Hong Kong; The National Museum of Art, Osaka; NUS Museum, Singapore; Rockbund Art Museum, Shanghai; Singapore Art Museum; and Weserburg Museum of Modern Art, Bremen.
Notable solo exhibitions include The Endless Summer (2024), UCCA Dune, Beidaihe; Writing While Walking And Other Stories (2020), Singapore Art Museum, Singapore; The Library of Unread Books (2019), Jameel Art Centre, Dubai; fictionfictionfiction (2019), Museum of Modern Art, Bremen; Spirits in the Material World (2019), Nieuwe Instituut, Rotterdam; The Library of Unread Books (2018), Kunstverein, Milan; Legal Books (Shanghai) (2018), Swiss Institute, New York; The Library of Unread Books (2017), Museum of Contemporary Art and Design, Manila; If, Ands, or Buts (2016), Rockbund Art Museum, Shanghai; and Never, A Dull Moment (2015), Art Sonje Center, Seoul. The artist has also participated in major international festivals including APT7 (2017), 7th Asia Pacific Triennial, Brisbane; For an Image, Faster Than Light (2016), 1st Yinchuan Biennale; The future is already here—it’s just not evenly distributed (2016), 20th Biennale of Sydney; Burning Down the House (2014), 10th Gwangju Biennale; Imagine Being Here Now (2011), 6th Momentum Nordic Biennial, Moss; In Dialogue with Northern Africa (2010), Manifesta 8, Murcia; Wonder (2008), 2nd Singapore Biennale; Chasm (2004), 2nd Busan Biennale; and Dreams and Conflicts (2003), 50th Venice Biennale.
Chong has had three residencies at the STPI Workshop in 2006, 2020 and 2023, with the latter two culminating in the exhibitions Peace Prosperity And Friendship With All Nations (2021), curated by Kathleen Ditzig, and Meditations on Shadow Libraries (2024), curated by Brian Kuan Wood.
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