Paradise Is At The Tip Of A Needle

Works from the Linda Neo & Albert Lim Collection

Opening 13 January 2025 // By appointment only

Download exhibition catalogue here

If war were to mark a turn in the history of art in Southeast Asia, what would it wage? And how might it turn art-historically in a locality of countries that contrives a region? It would perhaps provoke at the outset a confrontation with the oftentimes ruthless, though supposedly civilising, colonial force that had mapped out the territories of nation and culture, and the geographies of art and its histories. ― Patrick Flores in ‘Charting Thoughts: Essays on Art in Southeast Asia’

In his study of the role of conflict in shaping the characteristics of Southeast Asian art during the 1950s and 1960s, curator Patrick Flores proposes the following conditions that influenced the region's cultural production: “the struggle with successive colonialisms, the coming to terms with independence, and the process of belonging to the international world.” He further identifies the following themes that are common in artistic motivations for the healing of a post-trauma society, where the themes of reconstruction, revolution and independence underpin the works.

The rise of nationalism and the formation of new nation-states in the aftermath of Euro-American colonialism, and artistic responses to this climate is another symptom that John Clark observes in Southeast Asian art. Pointing to the concept of nationalism as a constructed one, he notes the emergence of a negotiatory inflection in the region’s art-making—where the narratives of nationalism and the nation were both contested and layered with those of independence, the postcolonial experience, and the legacies of colonialism.

These ideas proposed by Clark and Flores— art as a form of resistance and gestures of reconstructing society—continue to resonate in the works of more recent contemporary Southeast Asian artists. The exhibition Paradise is at the Tip of a Needle explores the enduring impacts of the region's histories and politics, showing how these complex legacies have been transformed into art that foregrounds the social purpose of art-making. Borrowing its title from one of Singaporean artist Fyerool Darma’s works, the phrase serves as a metaphor for how the pursuit of a better way of being and living can often be fraught with uncertainty, precarity, and at the risk of destabilisation. With artworks drawn from the Linda Neo and Albert Lim Collection, the exhibition invites viewers to reflect on the interplay between past and present, contested memories and knowledge systems which the artists of the region express in their works.

- Excerpt by Michelle Ho

This exhibition is curated by Michelle Ho.

Visit us on site to view the full collection of works in the exhibition.