National Gallery SG announces Venice biennale participation
NATIONAL Gallery Singapore announces that for the first time in the country’s history, artists from the Gallery’s collection have been invited to participate in the Main Exhibition of the 60th International Art Exhibition — La Biennale di Venezia (Biennale Arte 2024), titled “Stranieri Ovunque — Foreigners Everywhere,” curated by Adriano Pedrosa.
The artworks are featured in the Nucleo Storico section in the main exhibition, in a subsection titled Portraits, which expands the history of modernism beyond Europe and North America by focusing on stories from the Global South, including artists whose trajectories took them across continents and contexts over the tumultuous course of the 20th century.
With more than 8,000 works, the National Gallery Singapore holds the largest public collection of modern art from Southeast Asia, offering a unique point of departure for transnational curatorial and research efforts that seek to position art from Singapore and Southeast Asia as integral to global art histories.
Ranging from self-portraits to representations of working class and indigenous persons, eight artworks by Southeast Asian artists from the Gallery’s collection come from Vietnam, Singapore, Indonesia and Malaysia.
“National Gallery Singapore is proud to present works from its collection in the 60th International Art Exhibition — La Biennale di Venezia. Together with artists largely from the Global South, these eight portraits will deepen the understanding of modern art in Southeast Asia within a global context,” National Gallery Singapore CEO Eugene Tan said.