This episode features a conversation between Artist-in-Residence Shahmen Suku and Singaporean artist Moses Tan. With disparate practices, the two find synergy as they uncover shared ground in their drawn-out path in becoming a visual artist. They discuss how Shahmen’s experience growing up as a minority in Singapore shaped his practice that employs humour and double-meanings to confront difficult truths. Shahmen also ponders upon the position he occupies in straddling the lines between performance within theatre, performativity, and performance within the visual arts.
Shahmen Suku is a performance artist who works between Sydney and Canberra, Australia. Drawing from his personal experience of growing up in a matriarchal Tamil household in Singapore, Shahmen’s body of work explores multifaceted perspectives on migration, displacement, race, culture, colonisation, and gender identity. The personal, poignant, and irreverent narratives generated around these themes are conveyed through performances, installations, and video works and they are often voiced by his alter ego, Radha.
Moses Tan 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 sculpture, drawing, video and installation, his interest lies in the use of subtlety and codes in the articulation of narratives. He currently programs and runs starch.sg, an artist-run space in Singapore.
Contributors: Shahmen Suku, Moses Tan
Editor: Magdalena Magiera
Programme Manager: Nadia Amalina
Sound Engineer: Ashwin Menon
Intro & Outro Music: Zachary Chan
Cover Image & Design: Arabelle Zhuang, Kristine Tan