> NTU Centre for Contemporary Art Singapore (NTU CCA Singapore)

NTU Centre for Contemporary Art Singapore (NTU CCA Singapore)
A leading international art institution, NTU CCA Singapore is a platform, host and partner creating and driven by dynamic thinking in its three-fold constellation: Exhibitions; Residencies Programme; and Research and Academic Education. A national research centre for contemporary art of Nanyang Technological University, the Centre focuses on Spaces of the Curatorial. It brings forth innovative and experimental forms of emergent artistic and curatorial practices that intersect the present and histories of contemporary art embedded in social-political spheres with other fields of knowledge.

NTU CCA Singapore positions itself as a space for critical discourse and encourages new ways of thinking about Spaces of the Curatorial in Southeast Asia and beyond. As a research centre, we aim to provide visiting researchers and curators a comprehensive platform to study contemporary art ecosystems in Singapore and the region.

Part of the research and academic programmes arm is the Public Resource Platform, which includes the research library, contemporary artist files, and video documentation. The artist files aim to provide an entry point to contemporary artistic practice in Southeast Asia, containing visual material and audio recordings of talks from over 90 local artists and NTU CCA Singapore’s Artists-in-Residence. The video documentation gives insight into past public events of the Centre, offering an expanded understanding of the complexity and diversity of contemporary art production, and how it intersects with current developments in culture, society, and politics.

Facilitating the production of knowledge and research, the Centre’s Residencies Programme invites both local and international artists, curators, and researchers. Our seven studios support the artistic process in the most direct way by giving Artists-in-Residence the time and locale to be fully engaged with their research, and the access to an immersive context for developing ideas.

Since its inauguration in October 2013, NTU CCA Singapore has featured leading artists, presenting their work for the first time in Southeast Asia. This approach makes the Centre one of the few spaces in Singapore to present contemporary art from around the globe. As an institution, we have dynamic public programmes such as lectures, workshops, open studios, film screenings, Exhibition (de)Tours, and Stagings, that engage with various audiences.

NTU CCA Singapore Research Centre and Office: +65 6460 0300
Block 6 Lock Road, #01-09/10, Gillman Barracks, Singapore 108934

NTU CCA Singapore Exhibitions: +65 6339 6503
Block 43 Malan Road, Gillman Barracks, Singapore 109443

NTU CCA Singapore Residencies:
Blocks 37 and 38 Malan Road, Gillman Barracks, Singapore 109452 and 109441

NTU CCA Singapore Exhibitions

Non-Aligned
4 April – 27 September 2020
The Exhibition Hall, Block 43 Malan Road



The Unfinished Conversation (2012)
John Akomfrah (United Kingdom)

Two Meetings and a Funeral (2017)
Naeem Mohaiemen (Bangladesh/United States)

Nucleus of the Great Union (2017)
The Otolith Group (United Kingdom)

The British Empire spanned from Asia to Australia to Africa to America to the Caribbean. The various colonial territories gained their sovereignty and independence at different times, in processes of decolonization that played out in the histories of nations, but also determined the lives of individuals. Non-Aligned brings together three moving-image works by artists, filmmakers, and writers that inquire into the challenging transition periods from colonial rule to the independence of nations.

The presented works apply archival material in different ways. The focus spans from the work and personal histories of intellectuals who experienced these unprecedented circumstances first-hand, including Jamaican-born British theorist Stuart Hall (1932-2014) and African American novelist Richard Wright (1908-1960), to the history of political organization around the Non-Aligned Movement. This process of examining the interconnected stories of place, identity, and the conscious assertion of difference from established Western narratives, is also embedded in the personal histories of the artists.

The Non-Aligned Movement was formally established in 1961 on principles such as world peace and cooperation, human rights, anti-racism, respect, disarmament, non-aggression, and justice. At the height of the Cold War, a large group of African, Asian, and Latin American countries navigating post-colonial constellations attempted a diversion from the two major powers—the United States and the Soviet Union—forming what is to date the largest grouping of states worldwide, after the United Nations. The non-aligned nations, which Singapore joined in 1970, wished to secure independence and territorial sovereignty, and fight against imperialism, domination, and foreign interference.

This history is at the core of Two Meetings and a Funeral (2017), a feature-length three-channel video installation by Naeem Mohaiemen. It explores Bangladesh’s historical pivot from the socialist perspective of the 1973 Non-Aligned Movement meeting in Algeria to the emergence of a petrodollar-funded Islamic perspective at the 1974 Organisation of Islamic Countries meeting in Lahore. Recounted by Algerian publisher Samia Zennadi, Bangladeshi politician Zonayed Saki, and Indian historian Vijay Prashad, Mohaiemen’s film considers the erosion of the idea of “Third World” as a political space that was to open the potential for decoloniality and socialism, while articulating the internal contradictions behind its unfortunate failure.

In the video essay Nucleus of the Great Union (2017), The Otolith Group traces Richard Wright on his first trip to Africa in 1953. Travelling the Gold Coast for 10 weeks, he witnessed political campaigns for independence in West Africa, yet feeling alienation at his first encounter with the continent. For this film, The Otolith Group reconciled excerpts from Wright’s book Black Power: A Record of Reactions in a Land of Pathos (1954) with a selection of the over 1,500 previously unpublished photographs the writer took on his journey. Wright’s initially intended book including both text and photos was inadequately published without images. Through this work, The Otolith Group finally honors Wright’s initial aim of seeing image and text as one single narration.

The Unfinished Conversation (2012) is an in-depth inquiry by filmmaker John Akomfrah into the personal archive of audio interviews and television recordings of the influential theorist and educator Stuart Hall. The multi-screen film installation unfolds as a layered journey through the paradigm-changing work of the late intellectual, regarded as a key founder of cultural studies, who triangulated gender, race, and class. Hall was particularly invested in black identity linked to the history of colonialism and slavery.

Amplifying and celebrating defining voices and intertwining personal lives with political movements, the featured works in Non-Aligned examine not only the new possibilities for progressive social and independence movements but also the inherent struggles that define the post-WWII period.

Non-Aligned is curated by Ute Meta Bauer, Founding Director, NTU CCA Singapore, and Professor, School of Art, Design and Media, NTU.



Gillman Barracks "Art & History" Tours
These free docent-led tours by Friends of the Museum will uncover Gillman Barracks’ rich history and introduce its galleries and include a visit to NTU CCA Singapore. Tours run from Fridays to Sundays at varied timings. Please register at www.gillmanbarracks.com/tours.

Education Programmes
For enquiries on programmes and school tour bookings, please email [email protected].

NTU CCA Singapore Exhibitions 
NTU CCA Singapore Exhibitions is focused on contemporary artistic production that provides a critical platform for reflection and discussion. The exhibition programme embraces artistic production in all its diverse media with a commitment to current debates in visual culture. NTU CCA Singapore presents up to four exhibitions a year ranging in format from group to solo shows giving voice to a diversity of international artists. Each exhibition is accompanied by an extensive public programme of tours, talks and workshops that foster reflections on the exhibition from various perspectives and disciplines. 

To learn about our past, current and upcoming exhibitions, click here.

NTU CCA Singapore Residencies

NTU CCA Singapore Residencies hosts artists, curators, critics and scholars. At its core is a research driven studio programme dedicated to facilitating the production and creation of work, knowledge and research by established and emerging artists from Singapore and abroad. The programme is augmented with public events Residencies: Insights / Studio Sessions / OPEN series, ranging from open studio sessions, lectures, live performances, to special projects in The Lab, NTU CCA Singapore’s space for curatorial experimentation.

The Residencies programme is an integral part of the NTU CCA Singapore’s mission as a research centre. Dedicated to hosting artists and facilitating a short- and long-term visiting programme for curators and scholars, the Residencies programme aims to work as a catalyst for critical practices and build discourses that are especially resonant in the region. Studio space and residencies slots are also specifically reserved for Singapore and Southeast Asian artists to further commit to development of a regional network and research that is contextually specific. 

The application for residency at NTU CCA Singapore is via nomination, please email [email protected] for more information.


To learn about our Artists/Curators-in-Residence, click here.

NTU CCA Singapore Research & Education

The Research & Education programme aims to connect academic research with other forms of knowledge production. NTU CCA Singapore hosts visiting scholars of various disciplines whose research areas address Singapore in relation to its position within a wider geography. NTU CCA Singapore’s current research clusters engage with questions of Global Asia, postcolonial spaces, migration and labour, diaspora, old and new trade routes.

To learn about our Research & Education programme, click here.

Academic Programme

Under NTU’s School of Art, Design and Media (ADM’s) Master of Art (Research) and Doctor of Philosophy programmes, NTU CCA Singapore offers a stream in Spaces of the Curatorial. The research-oriented MA & PhD programmes will provide students with the opportunity to pursue independent research in the new ADM research areas of Museum Studies and Curatorial Practice and Art in Public Space & Critical Spatial Practice.

Call for application:
For more information: www.adm.ntu.edu.sg/programmes

Public Resource Centre

The Artist Resource Platform contains visual material and audio recordings of talks from over 90 local artists, NTU CCA Singapore’s Artists-in-Residence and independent art spaces. This archive provides local and visiting curators, scholars and writers, as well as an interested public, a point of entry to contemporary artistic practice.

For more information about NTU CCA Singapore’s Artist Resource Platform, please visit www.ntu.ccasingapore.org/research/public-resource-centre.


Publication Programme

The NTU CCA Singapore Publications programme serves as another space of the curatorial. A recipient and producer of knowledge, the publishing activity contributes to the holistic approach of the NTU CCA Singapore by expanding the connections across the Centre’s exhibitions, residencies, public programming and academic education. Through their mobility and lasting nature, publications will introduce and disseminate the Centre's research beyond its physical parameters.

For more information about NTU CCA Singapore’s Publication programme, please visit www.ntu.ccasingapore.org/publications.




NTU CCA SINGAPORE STAFF

Professor Ute Meta Bauer Founding Director

Exhibitions & Residencies

Dr Karin Oen Deputy Director, Curatorial Programmes
Dr Anna Lovecchio Curator, Residencies
Magdalena Magiera Curator, Outreach & Education
Lim Ze-Tian Assistant Curator, Exhibitions
Frankie Fang Assistant Manager, Production
Isrudy Shaik Senior Executive, Production
Ilya Katrinnada Binte Zubaidi Curatorial Assistant, Outreach & Education
Seet Yun Teng Curatorial Assistant, Residencies
Susan Htoo Young Professional Trainee, Residencies
Nuruzzahra Abdul Aziz Young Professional Trainee, Exhibitions 


Research & Education

Soh Kay Min Executive, Conference, Workshop & Archive
Yin Ying Kong Young Professional Trainee, Research

Operations & Strategic Development

Peter Lin Deputy Director, Operations & Strategic Development
Jasmaine Cheong Assistant Director, Operations & Human Resource
Jillian Kwan Assistant Director, Development
Joyce Lee Manager, Finance
Cheryl Ho Manager, Communications
Perla Espiel Special Projects Assistant
Iris Tan Senior Executive, Administration & Finance
Louis Tan Executive, Operations
Arabelle Zhuang Executive, Operations
Ong Xue Min Executive, Communications
Sage Lee Young Professional Trainee, Communications

NTU CCA SINGAPORE Governing Council

CO-CHAIRS
Professor Joseph Liow, Dean, College of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences, Nanyang Technological University (NTU)
Mr Low Eng Teong, Deputy Chief Executive Director, National Arts Council (NAC) Singapore

MEMBERS
Professor Michael Walsh, Chair, School of Art, Design and Media (ADM), NTU
Professor Kwok Kian Woon, Associate Provost (Student Life), President’s Office, NTU
Mr Tay Tong, Director, Sector Development, NAC
Dr June Yap, Director, Curatorial, Collections and Programmes, Singapore Art Museum (SAM)
Ms Cindy Koh, Director, Consumer, Singapore Economic Development Board (EDB)
Mr Mike Samson, Managing Director, Regional Head, Corporate Finance ASA & Regional Head ASEAN Leveraged and Structured Solutions, Standard Chartered Bank
Mr Michael Tay, Group Managing Director, The Hour Glass Limited

NTU CCA SINGAPORE International Advisory Board

CHAIR
Professor Nikos Papastergiadis, Director, Research Unit in Public Cultures, and Professor, School of Culture and Communication, The University of Melbourne, Australia

MEMBERS
Antonia Carver, Director, Jameel Arts Centre, Dubai, United Arab Emirates
Doryun Chong, Deputy Director and Chief Curator, M+, Hong Kong
Catherine David, Deputy Director in charge of Research and Globalisation, MNAM/CCI, Centre Pompidou, Paris, France
Professor Patrick Flores, Department of Art Studies, University of the Philippines and Curator Jorge B. Vargas Museum, Manila, Philippines
Ranjit Hoskote, cultural theorist and independent curator, Mumbai, India
Professor Ashley Thompson, Hiram W. Woodward Chair of Southeast Asian Art, SOAS University of London, United Kingdom
Philip Tinari, Director, UCCA Center for Contemporary Art, Beijing, China

NTU Centre for Contemporary Art Singapore (NTU CCA Singapore)
Exhibitions: Block 43 Malan Road, Gillman Barracks, Singapore 109443. Research Centre and Office: Block 6 Lock Road, #01-09/10, Gillman Barracks, Singapore 108934

Exhibition Hours
Tue - Sun: 12.00 - 7.00pm
Mon: Closed
Open on Public Holidays
Free Admission

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