Grafting Together / Apart and Tending to the Garden: An Archive of Care are curated by two curatorial teams from the BA (Hons) Art Histories and Curatorial Practices: Asia and the World programme at LASALLE. While distinct in their curatorial approach, both exhibitions explore the relationship between art and nature, set within the storied grounds of the Singapore Botanic Gardens.
Grafting Together / Apart
Presented at the Singapore Botanic Gardens—a historic site of botanical exchange and experimentation—Grafting Together / Apart draws on the horticultural technique of grafting, where different plants are joined to grow as one, as a fertile metaphor for how identities are shaped through shared histories and encounters.
Featuring works by recent BA (Hons) and MA Fine Arts graduates from LASALLE, the exhibition explores what happens when different cultures, memories and traditions come into contact with each other. It attends to everyday moments of encounter and exchange, where differences are negotiated and grafted into fresh forms.
Artists: Cavin Lim, Hendra Selamat, Liz Yap, Tristan Lim
Curators: Emil Chew, Farahin Rahim, Radin Surina, Sarah Zheng
Tending to the Garden: An Archive of Care
Like gardening, the act of keeping record involves processes of care: both require attention, patience, and recognition of the conditions that shape growth. Tending to the Garden: An Archive of Care frames the care of a garden as an analogy for a thoughtful approach to archiving.
Five artists from LASALLE’s BA (Hons) and Diploma in Fine Arts programmes—Dalilah Binti Mohamed Iqbal, Natalie Savann Oh, Nehal Agarwal, Wang Xi Jie and Zhen Hong Toh—contemplate how their desires and perspectives affect the archives they choose to keep, drawing on a range of media and socially engaged practices to reconsider archiving in expansive ways.
Though every archive may begin with a desire to remember, this exhibition reflects on the process and practice of archiving, and its afterlife. At its heart, Tending to the Garden: An Archive of Care is motivated by this human tendency to record—not only to hold on to individual memories, but to open new pathways for care to emerge.
Artists: Dalilah Binti Mohamed Iqbal, Natalie Savann Oh, Nehal Agarwal, Wang Xi Jie, Zhen Hong Toh
Curators: Isabelle Tay, Samyuktha Kandaswamy, Sarah Alhabshe, Saskia Alifya
Jointly organised with
