Lonely Vectors will first be launched at SAM’s hoardings and in public libraries before opening in Tanjong Pagar Distripark.
From 19 February to 11 September 2022, Singapore Art Museum (SAM) is launching a new multi-site exhibition titled Lonely Vectors, which will unfold in three stages.
Lonely Vectors presents a series of artworks and new commissions that draw attention to the flow of bodies and labour, exclusive zonings, fault lines, choke points, and infrastructural politics that characterise the global economy. These include lines and networks around the world such as agricultural and irrigation channels, trade and shipping routes, economic zonings and migratory patterns, which not only reflect the movement of goods, but also highlight the uneven distribution of the global economy.
The Green Crab: A Diagram of Auspicious Spatial Organization will kick-off the Lonely Vectors exhibition in February 2022 at SAM's public hoardings while the second presentation, Seeding Sovereignty, will be on showcase in public libraries from March 2022.
The third and final presentation for Lonely Vectors will be held at SAM at Tanjong Pagar Distripark from 3 June to 4 September 2022.
The Green Crab: A Diagram of Auspicious Spatial Organization
Image credits: Singapore Art Museum
Venue: Hoarding around SAM's building on Bras Basah and 8 Queen Street
Date: 19 Feb - 28 Aug 2022
Time: Accessible at all times
Fee: Free
Kicking off the first presentation in the Lonely Vectors exhibition is the newly commissioned site-specific installation – The Green Crab: A Diagram of Auspicious Spatial Organization. The installation is a speculative feng shui map of Singapore which provides an alternative guide for navigating the city.
Image credits: Singapore Art Museum
Created by Australian artist-duo Zheng Mahler in collaboration with Singaporean architectural historian Ian Tan and One Bite Design Studio, the work reveals the hidden qi flows woven into the fabric of Singapore’s master plan for urban development. It is an exploration of the intersection between state-led urbanism in East Asia, and the guiding principles of Chinese metaphysics.
Image credits: Singapore Art Museum
The Green Crab invites the public to interact with the work by locating familiar neighbourhoods through annotated maps. As visitors discover various symbolic metaphors, myths and legends will be unravelled by way of these visually captivating maps.
Seeding Sovereignty
Image credits: Marcuse Woodwork
Venue:
- Bedok Public Library: 1 - 31 Mar 2022
- Ang Mo Kio Public Library: 2 Apr - 6 Jun 2022
- Jurong Public Library: 8 Jun - 24 Jul 2022
- Tampines Public Library: 27 Jul - 11 Sep 2022
Fee: Free
In the second presentation of Lonely Vectors, a new commission by Singapore artist Chu Hao Pei will travel across the public libraries in Bedok, Ang Mo Kio, Jurong and Tampines. Titled Seeding Sovereignty, the presentation takes the form of a series of cabinets that function as a seed library to showcase Singapore’s intertwined past with rice and the region.
Image credits: Marcuse Woodwork
Both visual and tactile, these cabinets are accompanied by archival texts, images and myths within its drawers, and visitors are encouraged to interact with the seed library by gleaning information from its drawers and taking a packet of rice seeds home with them.
Image credits: Chu Hao Pei
The work reflects a different mode of seed distribution in response to the spatial typology of a library, inviting audiences to consider their relationship to the land, the food we eat, and how rice can bring a region together.
Drawing on Chu Hao Pei’s long-term interest in the circulation of rice within Singapore and the rest of Southeast Asia, the work is a continuation of Chu’s research on seed sovereignty, which was also explored at Present Realms, a joint presentation that concluded the pilot SAM Residency programme.
Seeding Sovereignty was made in collaboration with Dhanny Sanjaya and Marcuse Woodworks.
