Beyond the Future: Papers from the Third Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art

experience as a woman is valid and relevant. It also made me realise the importance for every woman to express her thoughts and record her experiences . Now I would like to show you some of the projects I have done and discuss the cond ition of art making in Singapore. What are the constraints; what are the negotiations I have to make to express myself as a woman in a male-dominated culture? It is difficult to be a woman artist; it is even more difficult to be a woman artist making art about women and with feminist perspectives. There were no role models to begin with . Documentation of women artists had only started in the '90s. An interview was conducted with Georgette Chen, the only woman artist in the '30s , who made oil paintings of local still life and family portraits. The interview was conducted when she was already in her seventies and was paralysed in hospital. There were no discussions or written documents on women artists and their works in the '50s, '60s and '70s, until recently. Most women artists both old and young are still afraid to be associated with terms like 'women artists' and 'feminist artists'. I have often found myself working in isolation . My works are often exh ibited without the support of a feminist theoretical context and are often regarded as copies of western women artists or easily dismissed as too personal; lacking the objective and universal perspectives of the patriarchal approach . Making space for women It didn't take me long to realise that no curators in art museums and galleries would take women artists seriously and that women artists have to take the initiative, to create their own space for exhibition. 'Women and Their Arts' was an exhibition organised in 1 99 1 at the National Museum Art Gallery in Singapore. Its aim was to provide space for women artists only. Ten women artists, including three foreigners, presented more than fifty works of ceramics, watercolour drawings, paintings, sculptures and installations. Artists' talks were held during the exhibition. It was the first time women's intimate experience, such as miscarriage, pregnancy and female sexuality were expressed and exh ibited in public. It immediately attracted public attention to women artists and their works in Singapore. It was seven years after 'Women and Their Arts', that I organised 'Women About Women' (in 1 998) to bring together women artists from different parts of the world to look into basic questions of what it is to be female and what are the cond itions of womanhood in different cultural and pol itical contexts . It was a multi-media and multi-discipl inary event held in collaboration with The Singapore International Film Festival and Singapore Art Museum . Twenty women artists, film-makers, video artists, writers , journalists and performance artists from Japan, India, Singapore, Canada, USA, Indonesia, Taiwan and Thailand showed their works in film, video, video installations, slide projections and live performances. Now I would like to show you some of the works with slides: Mango is a touching account of childhood memories in Thailand . It is a short film by Thai artist, Laddawa Passar Kaner, who is now residing in the United States. Who Says Who We Are ? by Dana Lam, a writer and artist working in Singapore, is a video documentary of interviews with women of various ages and social levels on their attitudes about womanhood and gender roles. The Petrel Return is a docu-drama of the life of dancer/teacher Cai Ru iyu made by Taiwanese filmmaker, Huang Yu Shan . Conversation is a video installation where two videos run simultaneously by way of a dialogue, contributed by Arahmaiani from Indonesia and Varsha Nair from India. Take a Deep Breath is my presentation in a live performance with slide projections of photographic stills of body parts to articulate the inner sense of my natural female self. If Virginia Woolfmeets Eileen Chang is a collaborative effort of Eva Tang, Janice and Ng Siang Pin, comparing autobiographical texts of the two famous women writers of the 1 930s, in an experimental short film. 47