Artist Talk: Nge Lay
30 May 2018
Flying in the Fragmentary: Nge Lay in conversation with Louis Ho
Date: 23 June 2018
Time: 4 – 5 PM
Venue: Gillman Barracks, 9 Lock Road #02-23, Singapore 108937
Yavuz Gallery will be holding an artist talk in conjunction with Nge Lay’s solo exhibition Flying in the Fragmentary. In conversation with the artist will be Louis Ho, curator at the Singapore Art Museum, where his focus is on the art of Malaysia, Myanmar and Brunei.
Flying in the Fragmentary is Nge Lay’s first solo exhibition with the gallery. It features one large-scale installation, the titular artwork transforming the gallery into an immersive, life-sized replica of a Myanmar classroom. The work consists of thirty hanging mannequins wearing school uniforms, rows of blackboards, stacks of local textbooks, and traditional schoolbags sourced from rural Myanmar. The exhibition is the culmination of the artist’s ongoing investigation on the country’s state of education, and invites viewers to connect with its school system – a fragmented, severely censored institution, which has struggled since Myanmar’s military coup in 1962.
About the Artist
Nge Lay (b. 1979, Myanmar) is a multi-media artist that works across installation, sculpture, performance art and photography. Her works are an intensely personal reflection of her experiences in Myanmar society, particularly on socio-political issues surrounding gender, education, history and memory. Nge Lay has exhibited extensively, and with institutions such as Asia Society Museum (USA), Palais de Tokyo (France), Queensland Art Gallery, Gallery of Modern Art (Australia), Singapore Art Museum, Fukuoka Asian Art Museum (Japan)and so forth. Recent curated exhibitions include: After Darkness: Southeast Asian Art in the Wake of History, Asia Society Museum (2018),Collectionner, le désir inachevé, Musée des Beaux-Arts, Angers, France (2018), Asia Young 36, Jeonbuk Museum of Art, South Korea (2016), Open Sea, Museum of Contemporary Art, Lyon, France (2015), Women In-Between: Asian Women Artists 1984-2010, Fukuoka Asian Art Museum (2012). She has participated in the Dhaka Art Summit (2016), 8th Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art (2015), Singapore Biennale (2013), and was a finalist of the 2012 Sovereign Asian Art Prize.
About the Moderator
Louis Ho was a co-curator of the Singapore Biennale 2016, ‘An Atlas of Mirrors’, and a curator at the Singapore Art Museum, where his focus is on the art of Malaysia, Myanmar and Brunei. His first exhibition for the museum was the permanent collection show, ‘After Utopia: Revisiting the Ideal in Asia Contemporary Art’, and his most recent is the ‘Asia Pacific Breweries Foundation Signature Art Prize 2018’ exhibition. Prior to joining the Singapore Art Museum’s curatorial team, he was an independent art historian, critic and curator. He has lectured at the National Institute of Education, and is a contributor to various journals and publications, such as Modern Chinese Literature and Culture and Art Asia Pacific. He was trained in art history, and his research interests include Southeast Asian visual culture, particularly film, and the intersections between art and the social.