Review: Singapore: Inside Out

Of all the SG50-related events, Singapore Tourism Board’s travelling arts showcase Singapore: Inside Out (SGIO) can arguably be consider the odd one out.

While a majority of the populace were partaking in a year-long national conversation — courtesy of exhibitions, performances or festivals — right here in Singapore, SGIO had been jetsetting to Beijing, London and New York, like a mobile cultural ambassador (just in case the rest of the world hadn’t realised the country was having a party).

Comprising a core of 20 artists across various creative disciplines — from the performing, visual and literary arts to food, music, design and fashion — it was a pretty ambitious (and undoubtedly expensive) way of presenting a kind of portable portrait of Singapore by way of its creative scene.

So what happens when something that has been primarily talking to the outside world about Singapore — as a tourism project — now comes back home to tell Singapore about itself?

In some ways, SGIO’s homecoming showcase is a kind of report card.

The bulk of the event, held at Tan Quee Lan Street — and jostling for attention along with many other SG50-related events and festivals that are happening over the next few days — comprises what has been shown elsewhere.

The Singapore leg of SGIO has incorporated elements — as well as invited some collaborators — from the previous editions, to take part in this one. For instance, artist Speak Cryptic’s interactive room, which invites visitors to draw and leave their mark on it, now includes a panel from each of the three cities SGIO visited.

But SGIO is also somewhat of a sly animal. On one hand, there are some aspects about it that don’t really diverge from what has come to be equated with Singapore: Curator Randy Chan’s framing device of a portable scaffolding that can be arranged and rearranged according to the sites, coupled with sound artist Zulkifle Mahmod’s cling-clang sound installation, evoke the incessant construction many have come to associate with the city state.

What it presents is also what one would obviously expect from a country’s travelling arts showcase. That is, a line-up of the best Singapore has to offer in terms of the creative industries, such as a video piece from an internationally recognised artist such as Ho Tzu Nyen, for instance. There is also a wide-ranging sample platter of literary, design and music gems selected by known and credible artists and groups such as poet Alvin Pang, design and advertising agency Kinetic and indie label Ujikaji Records.

But at the same time, SGIO springs a few surprises, too.

For someone aware of the history of performance art in Singapore, the inclusion of performance artist Jason Lim, who will perform a durational piece that includes candles, is certainly a curious and surprising one.

What does it mean when an art form that was initially very much frowned upon by authorities in the 1990s — to the point of imposing funding cuts — is, decades later, part of the line-up of a government-endorsed international event?

But this also brings up one subtle aspect of SGIO: Its foreign audiences would likely have no idea of what had happened in the past; and Lim’s inclusion would simply be an example of the diversity of work being done in Singapore.

It’s likely the case, too, with some of the other works here, which have inserted subtle comments — or at least are self-reflexive about its presence — in this showcase.

There’s Robert Zhao Renhui’s deadpan “tourist museum shop” that “sells” Singapore’s sand reserves as a tourist spot and chicken rice as a souvenir. The shop’s logo mimics STB’s own — it’s a nudge-wink reference to the board and to tourism as a whole.

Meanwhile, an actor’s tour, where performers act as SGIO participating artists, talks about how it is to be an artist in Singapore and even brings up the term “cultural desert”. Even the title of THE Dance Company’s dance piece, Permission To Speak, Sir, hints at issues of authority, censorship and language (one part features a dancer randomly reading a news report in Malay).

Many of these references were probably likely to fly over the heads of SGIO’s first audiences in Beijing, London and New York, but perhaps would have a richer and deeper resonance for a group of people that wasn’t its primary audience — the residents of Singapore.

Yes, SGIO might have been talking to the outside world for the past year, but now that it’s back home, we would do well to also listen to some of its quiet asides.

Singapore: Inside Out runs from Nov 27 to Dec 6 at Tan Quee Lan Street (opposite Bugis Junction). Free admission. Free shuttle bus services available from National Gallery Singapore and the Singapore Visitor Centre at Orchardgateway. For more information, visit http://www.singaporeinsideout.com/singapore