Singapore Biennale 2019

rtistic director Patrick Flores and six curators took the Singapore Biennale 2019 (SB2019) as an opportunity to reflect on what (2019). The show inlcuded works by more than 70 artists from Southeast Asia and beyond. One hallmark of SB2019 was that the National Gallery of Singapore hosted historical as well as contemporary artists, such as performance artist and novelist Theresa Hak Kyung Cha; Filipino-American artist Carlos Villa, who received a miniature survey of 14 multi-media pieces; and the archives of Manila artist Raymundo Albano. At Gillman Barracks, Robert Zhao Renhui presented photographs and objects gathered from the site’s natural environs while the Post-Museum collective showed artifacts from their theater created in a campaign to save the historical Bukit Brown Cemetery from being repurposed as residential land. Hafiz Rancajale’s (2017–19), comprising abstract drawings at Gillman Barracks and three films at Lasalle College of the Arts, probed notions of citizenship in post-Reformasi Indonesia. Projects at the Asian Civilizations Museum highlighted speculative narratives as means of navigating the present and future, including Lawrence Lek’s game-installation set in 2065 in Singapore, and Jen Liu’s performances and installations about incorporating gold into human DNA.