Jason Lim: Encounter under the banyan

From the series Duet with light
Performances:
Friday 9 February, 6:30–8:30 pm
Wednesday 14 February, 7:00–8:30 pm
Wednesday 21 February, 7:00–8:30 pm
Exhibition: 
13 February – 7 March
Please note that on performance days, the gallery will close at 6:00 pm

Under the shadow of the banyan tree 
Performance:
Tuesday 13 – Sunday 18 March
Exhibition: 
Tuesday 20 March – Thursday 12 April

In my performance work, to perform is to practise, and to learn. The previous performance informs the next one; each performance is therefore a practice, a lesson, and an exercise. It is also an investigation into what to do and how to do it, and how to ask and how to answer.

I am creating three-dimensional images. I often work the same piece in a variety of locations, and with the same materials. Each single element of the performance has its own energy, and its configuration is neither constant nor stable. The only constant in my performances is change.
—Jason Lim, 2017

For his first solo exhibition in a public institution in Singapore, Jason Lim will perform a programme of durational works that explore risk, ideas of change, and the transformation of materials. Lim’s work examines the behaviours of human bodies and elemental substances—earth, air, fire and water. He ventures to slow down time so that we can better register minute changes in the structure and properties of matter. 

Jason Lim’s performances with immense volumes of clay have their genesis in Three tonnes of clay, made collaboratively with Ng Siew Kuan at The Substation in 1995. Lim first invoked the aerial roots of the banyan tree, a species of fig venerated and mythologised in the Asia–Pacific region, for his solo exhibition at Gajah Gallery, Singapore, in 2017. For the Jakarta Biennale, organised by Artistic Director Melati Suryodarmo the same year, Lim created Under the shadow of the banyan tree, a 1.9-metre high, 8-metre wide installation made of 3000 kg of unfired terracotta clay. For LASALLE’s ICA Singapore, Lim will perform a new, site-specific version of that work.

Jason Lim has performed works from the meditative, poetic performance series Duet with light on three previous occasions, in Chicago (Rapid Pulse International Performance Art Festival, 2014), Singapore (The Substation, 2013), and Venice (Venice International Performance Art Week, 2012). Each performance scheduled in the Earl Lu Gallery will take a unique form.

Born in 1966 and trained as a ceramicist at London’s Central Saint Martins, Jason Lim is an alumnus of LASALLE College of the Arts who graduated with an MA in Fine Arts in 2003. His commitment to developing appreciation and understanding of performance art in Singapore has including organising events such as Future of Imagination (2003–15), which provided an international context for the form in Southeast Asia. 

Cover image: Jason Lim, Under the shadow of the banyan tree at the Jakarta Biennale, 2017, 5-day performance (5 hours each day), clay © Courtesy the artist. Photo: Ririn Riza