39+ Art Space is please to announce the opening of its latest exhibition, a group show of female artists titled The Analogue Attachments of Modern Love. Comprised of the work of 6 artists from across Southeast Asia, the exhibition is oriented around the making of things. The traditional tools of material manipulation, from the needle to the printing press, are no less utilized today than the appliances of our computerized age. If artists used to sew and knit and draw, they may be said to do the same with the keyboard and mouse today – with surprisingly non-digital results in certain cases. The machines that provide circuits of connectivity are no less instruments of the creative process in the twenty-first century than those tools that have ossified into cultural nostalgia and cottage industry in an era of wired interactivity and abstraction.
These techniques are assimilated into the practices of the artists included in The Analogue Attachments of Modern Love. Their objects and gestures, fashioned from thread and batik and aluminium and computer printouts and, indeed, the human body itself, among a panoply of other materials, simply suggest inflected and decidedly contemporary forms of object-making. The work of Indonesian Elia Nurvista, for instance, is an installation of 4 large batik panels, first shown in the WereldMuseum, the largest ethnographic museum in the Netherlands, that tells the complex history of the of the oil palm plant, which is native to west and southwest Africa. Singaporean Lim E-Lynn Joanne’s multi-component installation sees her grappling with the topic of privacy, both on the internet and in real life; Lim will be performatively covering the walls of the gallery in printouts at the opening of the exhibition. Celline Mercado, who hails from the Philippines, wraps found furniture in fibre threads as part of a body of work intended to convey conditions of liminality and precarity, especially among the Filipino diaspora. Chung Erica, also Singaporean, uses the medium of print to tell the story of citizenship and civic participation, while Supassara Ho, from Thailand, has utilized the methods of needle-based craft, such as crocheting, to address biographical issues.In mid-December, London-based, Singapore-born artist Lynn Lu will activate the exhibition with a performative piece.
The show, curated by independent curator, Louis Ho, will be on view from 23 November to 22 December 2024.
Artists:
Celline Mercado (b. 1997, Philippines)
Chung Erica(b. 1999, Singapore)
Elia Nurvista (b. 1983, Indonesia)
Lim E-Lynn Joanne (b. 1985, Singapore)
Lynn Lu (b. 1974, Singapore)
Supassara Ho (b. 2002, Thailand)
