An immersive multi-sensorial installation by emerging artist Renee Tan, Maladies of Rest explores the dreaming of a restful, care-centric world. Working across painting and installation, the artist invites us to rest in magical-scapes both fantastic and quotidian, that she made using the skills and materials of everyday crafts, including textiles, beads, yarn, flowers and paper.

The exhibition takes on multiple identities in the heart of a ceaseless and relentless city: it is simultaneously a sketchbook of playful three-dimensional curiosities; a ‘living room’ that breathes the lingering presence of souls real and imagined; and a community gathering place of silence, sound, spectatorship, and participation. Designed to offer feelings of restfulness, Maladies of Rest educes the physical states of restlessness and unrest that we might carry, individually and collectively, and asks what of it.

EXHIBITION DETAILS

Opening: 22 Jan, Wed, 6.30pm-8.30pm
Dates: 23 Jan - 23 Feb 2025
Venue: SMU de Suantio Gallery, 90 Stamford Road, Singapore 178903
Opening hours: Wed-Sat: 12pm-7pm | Sun: 12pm-4pm | Closed on Mon & Tue | Closed on 29 & 30 Jan for Chinese New Year

ABOUT THE ARTIST

Renee Tan (b. 2001, Singapore) is an installation artist who works across paper-cutting, painting, wire sculpture, floristry, illustration, and textile crafts to transform spaces into multisensorial environments. Her practice weaves themes of postcolonial imaginations of care with accessible aesthetics as a form of creative justice. Her field research informs her explorations of Posthumanist worldbuilding and the praxis of agonistic democracy.

Renee is a graduating student from Singapore Management University’s School of Social Sciences and College of Integrative Studies. She shares on how this exhibition arose from undertaking fieldwork for her thesis:

My senior thesis, which I wrote as part of the College of Integrative Studies' Individualised Second Major programme, is titled "Narrative Designs in a Global City: Imagining and Contesting Beauty through Art, Culture and Tourism in Metro Manila". I propose that narrative design is an interpretive and creative tool that urban actors use to navigate and change the physical and systemic infrastructure of the city according to their ideas of beauty, and explore three different stories of beauty according to actors in Metro Manila's arts, culture and tourism industries. 

Maladies of Rest is informed by my encounters of restfulness, restlessness and unrest over the course of my fieldwork in the Philippines. These experiences compelled my curiosity to design an art installation exhibition where I invite visitors from all walks of life to explore what restfulness might feel like, and what beauty might be according to them.

My ethnographic voice is clearest in my thesis field notes—it was by documenting the ordinary and ungrand incidents that occurred outside of interview rooms that I came to notice my own account of what beauty is. These reflections from the field guide my decision-making process in art-making: from conceptualising, to sourcing materials, to the day-to-day praxis of creating.

PROGRAMMES

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Bite-Sized Library Workshops | How to Be Interesting at Dinner Parties: An Introduction to Artistic Literacy (SMU Community only)
REGISTER HERE

Date: 6 February, Thursday
Time: 1pm-2pm
Venue: SMU de Suantio Gallery

“Why do you study art? To be interesting at dinner parties.” Although arts appreciation is an important skill for professional networking, self-presentation, and personal enjoyment, some may feel that one has to be an expert or artistic talent to be able to appreciate or critique the arts. In this workshop, artist Renee Tan makes a case for why arts appreciation is a skill that anyone can pick up for delightful use in personal and professional settings. Renee invites you to join this beginner-friendly workshop so you can learn how to talk about art the next time you find yourself at a dinner party with art-loving clients, or at a weekend creative event with friends and family.

This event is open to the SMU Community only.

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Workshop| A Gift, an Offering: Flower-Arranging as Accessible Art-Making
REGISTER HERE

Date: 8 February, Saturday
Time: 3pm-4.30pm
Venue: SMU de Suantio Gallery

Set within the cosy exhibition space, this beginner-friendly floral arrangement workshop begins with a sharing by the artist on her intentions and creative processes in making her first installation art exhibition. Come for this relaxed art-making session to learn more about the ideas and practices of what accessibility in the arts might be, and create your own mini floral arrangement to bring home as a gift or to leave at the exhibition space as a collaborative offering to the people who visit after you.

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Panel | A closing programme 
Date: 23 February 2025
Time: 3pm-4.30pm
Venue: SMU de Suantio Gallery

More details to be published soon.

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