In his archival project of 1,001 photographs of empty places islandwide for Calendars 2020-2096, the much lauded local contemporary artist, manipulates traditional notions of time and space as well as national narrative. He elucidates further to Patrick Benjamin.

You spent over seven years documenting the images for your work. Tell us more about the process.
It’s important to note that I photographed all these interior spaces in Singapore without ever having to talk to the owners of these spaces. Therefore, it is not a project buried under administration and negotiation. I wanted a system of collecting, which is much more like stealing something, in this case, stealing a moment of a publicly accessible interior space in Singapore surprisingly devoid of people.

Briefly describe what the project is about.
It can be viewed in its entirety as a novel about interior spaces as well as an historical and imaginary fictional document of interior spaces. It also relates to how we can place ourselves in a narrative. I think this is important for all Singaporeans, which they need to construct their own idea of what stories they want to have in order to imagine for ourselves: A home.

Conceptualism and a certain sense of absurdity are common themes in your oeuvre, why do you choose to delve into those spheres?
It’s not so much about f*cking around with people’s impression of art as much as trying to introduce different points of view about how to see art. I think people need to discard this perception of conceptual art as an easy import from Western societies, to discard this whole East-West binary of seeing things. There’s nothing easy about conceptualism. It is a practice that requires absolute concentration and precision to execute. It’s about placing something at the right time, at the right place so that one can have a new insight.

Calendars 2020-2096 runs through January 29 2012 at NUS Museums

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