Perth Institute of Contemporary Arts (PICA) is pleased to announce the six artists joining the inaugural Asia Pacific Exchange Program with Singapore and Taiwan.
The multi-year collaboration with Taipei Artist Village (Taiwan) and Grey Projects (Singapore) sees two WA artists travel to Asia, while PICA welcomes an international artist from both cities, for an eight-week artist residency.
In 2023, the WA recipients are writer and artist Aaqila and Perth-based artist Samuel Beilby, who will undertake a residency in Singapore and Taipei, respectively, from 24 April to 18 June.
In turn, PICA will host Taiwanese new media and sound artist Yen Tzu Chang from 16 January to 12 March, and Singaporean artist Moses Tan from 26 June to 20 August.
PICA Acting Director Georgia Malone said: “We’re excited to offer artists from both WA and Asia the opportunity to make connections and expand their practices through this new artistic exchange program.”
“For Yen Tzu and Moses Tan, we’ll facilitate collaborations with the WA-based arts community and institutions, sparking conversations, and the opportunity to engage with the artistic output of our regional neighbours.”
Aaqila’s (WA) visual, text-based and curatorial practice operates towards a provision of tools for collective liberation. They’re currently undertaking the Pari Ari P2P Ngariung exchange (AUS/IDN) and Australia Council International Curators Program (Asia Pacific Triennial/TarraWarra Biennial) across 2022 and 2023.
For his multi-media installations, Beilby (WA) works with generative AV, robotics, construction materials, and noise to map the tensions between human and non-human bodies and algorithms. He has exhibited at The Lobby, Goolugatup Heathcote, Artlaab, and UWA’s Cullity Gallery.
Chang (TPE) combines art, programming, and technical media into her artworks and sound performances. She has exhibited and performed at Ars Electronica Festival, roBOt 08 Festival, Digital Design Weekend in London, and Most Wanted: Music in Berlin.
Tan’s (SG) practice is based in drawing, video, and installation, and explores queer theory and politics using melancholia and shame as departure points. He has exhibited internationally in Yavuz Gallery (SG), Hidden Space (HK), Indiana University (US), Kunst Im Dialog (DE), and 4A Centre for Contemporary Asian Art (SYD).
Media Enquiries
For all media enquiries, please contact:
Sam Leung
Communications Manager
sam.leung@pica.org.au
08 9228 6307
Asia Pacific Exchange Artist Biographies
WA Artists
Aaqila (WA)
Grey Projects, Singapore
24 April – 18 June 2023
Aaqila (aka Aisyah Aaqil Sumito) is a writer, DJ, exhibition installer, and conceptual artist based in Boorloo/Perth. Their visual, text-based and curatorial practice operates towards a provision of tools for collective liberation, outside the tools of the institution. Aaqila’s belligerent concern for carving out space for queer and trans people of colour is deeply rooted in a hope for a better future. This manifests itself from queer club spaces and raves to exhibitions and galleries. Aaqila’s artistic research concerns reconciling contemporary and ancestral understandings of gender, and how this presents itself within a queer Malay diasporic subjectivity; dance, sound, poetry, storytelling, and music as avenue for ritualised post-traumatic healing; and queer negotiations of practicing Islam.
Aaqila has participated in multiple multidisciplinary creative projects at Perth Institute of Contemporary Arts, Propel Youth Arts WA, Blue Room Theatre, Fremantle Arts Centre, and the Art Gallery of WA; and interstate commissions with Disclaimer Journal (VIC), un. Projects (VIC), Granville Centre Art Gallery (NSW), and Runway Journal (NSW). They are currently undertaking the Pari Ari P2P Ngariung exchange (AUS/IDN), the Australia Council International Curators Program (Asia Pacific Triennial/TarraWarra Biennial), and the National Gallery of Australia’s Digital Young Writers Mentorship (ACT) across 2022 and 2023. They were a co-director at Perth’s Cool Change Contemporary artist-run initiative from 2019 to 2022, where they co-curated the hands should have no peace for Perth Festival 2021.
Samuel Beilby (WA)
Taipei Artists Village, Taipei
24 April – 18 June 2023
Samuel Beilby (he/they) is a multi-media installation artist and writer based in Boorloo/Perth. His practice and research interests address the sentience, softness, and piercing brutality of contemporary digital and mechanical new media technologies, generative tools, materialism, and labour. His projects often involve generative AV, robotics, construction materials, and noise in an attempt to map the tensions between human and non-human bodies, algorithms, information flows, and material voicings present within ‘late-capitalist’ worksites.
He is currently a committee member at Cool Change Contemporary, a tutor at the University of Western Australia’s School of Design’s Fine Art Department, and is a UWA Master of Fine Arts (Research) candidate. Beilby is a part of the Boorloo-based performance art collective, ‘mg.’ He has exhibited at The Lobby, Goolugatup Heathcote, Artlaab, and UWA’s Cullity Gallery.
Taiwan Artists
Yen Tzu Chang (TPE)
PICA, Perth
16 January – 12 March 2023
Yen Tzu Chang is a new media and sound artist based in Taiwan. She holds a bachelor’s degree in New Media Art from Taipei National University of the Arts. In 2018, she graduated with a master’s degree from the Interface Culture Department of the Kunstuniversität Linz in Austria. She combines art, programming, and technical media into her artworks, including interdisciplinary art and experimental performances based on sound installations. Her pieces often feature ready-made objects and DIY techniques. In her work, the concept of play is important, which refers to the interactivity and the transformation of the roles of participants.
Chang has delivered sound art performances/exhibitions at many international conferences and festivals, including Ars Electronica Festival, roBOt 08 Festival, Linux Audio Conference, International Symposium on Electronic Arts, Digital Design Weekend in London, and Most Wanted: Music in Berlin. Recently, combining her past experiences of sound, visual, and installation, she began to produce new media theatre, focusing on integrating technology, and text, and coordinating the overall operation and performance of installations and dancers.
Lu Wei (TPE)
Grey Projects, Singapore
16 January – 12 March 2023
Lu Wei is an artist and curator in Taipei, Taiwan who is currently pursuing a master’s degree in Fine Arts at Taipei National University of the Arts (TNUA). Based for the most part on Chinese ink painting, her creative work focuses on topics of gender politics, mythology, and nature. In addition to its attempts at subverting the established image of the female body, by remodelling images of mythological and religious figures, Wei’s work responds to personal life experiences but also Chinese art history, seeking in its absence of women, possibilities for contemporary ink painting. As it remodels images of mythological and religious figures, Wei’s work not only aims at subverting the established image of the female body but also responds to personal life experience as much as it responds to Chinese art history. Personal works include ink painting, writing, artist books, and paper cutting installation, in addition to collaborations on creative and curatorial projects.
Singapore Artists
Moses Tan (SG)
PICA, Perth
26 June – 20 August 2023
Moses Tan (b. 1986, Singapore) is a Singapore-based artist whose work explores histories that intersect with queer theory and politics while looking at melancholia and shame as points of departure. Working with drawing, video, and installation, his interest lies in the use of subtlety and codes in articulating narratives. He graduated from LASALLE College of the Arts with a BA(Hons) in Fine Arts and a BA(Hons) in Chemistry and Biological Chemistry from Nanyang Technological University.
He was awarded the Noise Singapore Award for Art and Design in 2014, Winston Oh Travel Research Grant in 2016, and the LASALLE Award for Academic Excellence in 2016. He has shown in Yavuz Gallery (SG), Grey Projects (SG), Hidden Space (HK), 1A Space (HK), Indiana University (US), Sabanci University (TR), Kunst Im Dialog (DE), and at 4A Centre for Contemporary Asian Art (SYD) and also completed a residency in Santa Fe Art Institute (US). He currently programs and runs starch.sg, an artist-run space in Singapore.
Salty Xi Jie Ng (SG)
Taipei Artists Village, Taipei
26 June – 20 August 2023
Salty Xi Jie Ng (b. 1987) is an artist and educator whose diverse practice spans cultures and contexts with a commitment to relational possibilities. Through collaborative encounters, she co-creates semi-fictional paradigms for the real and imagined lives of humans within the poetics of the intimate vernacular. Her practice proposes a collective re-imagining through humour, care, subversion, play, discomfort, a celebration of the eccentric, and a commitment to the deeply personal. She is concerned with the profound possibilities of aging, institutional critique, expanded spiritual expression, eroticism, the body as an intimate site, as well as the intersections of identity, ritual and cultural lineage. Salty has developed and managed durational projects and community partnerships in Singapore and the
U.S. with seniors, prisoners, and street performers. She has an MFA in Art & Social Practice from Portland State University, was awarded the Arlene Schnitzer Visual Arts Prize, and was artist-in-residence at Singapore Art Museum, University of Massachusetts Dartmouth (USA), Elsewhere Museum (USA), Kaman Art Foundation (India), Arteles Creative Centre (Finland), and Ban Kah Hiang, one of Singapore’s oldest religious goods merchants.
http://www.saltythunder.net/
Partners
Asia Pacific Exchange Program
