Content: navigating a point is the visual arts feature for SMU’s Arts Festival in 2010. Crafted in partnership with our neighbour and contemporary arts centre The Substation, the exhibition highlights are artworks from a selection of nine contemporary artists from Southeast Asia. These artworks were developed after the artists’ participation in SMU’s first ever residency programme, the SMU-ASEAN Artist Residency Programme.

Derived from the Latin ‘navigare’ meaning ‘to sail’, to navigate is fundamentally to locate one’s own position against other known locations.  In the context of the exhibition, this refers to the artists’ navigation to Singapore which is commonly marked as a dot or a ‘point’ on world maps due to its small size. It also alludes to the artists’ personal negotiations and necessary journeys in achieving various objectives through their art.

Amongst the artists represented at the exhibition are Ming Wong, whose solo installation Life of Imitation at the 53rd Venice Biennale received a Special Mention, Rich Streitmatter-Tran, co-curator of The Mekong at Asia-Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art in Brisbane in 2009, and Eko Nugroho, comic book and street artist who is now amongst Indonesia’s pool of internationally prominent contemporary artists.