The colonial museum deconstructed

The exhibition ‘Come cannibalize us, why don’t you?’ reveals the idiosyncrasies, anecdotes and shifting rules that accompanied the colonial museum project from the point of view of contemporary artist, Erika Tan.

Emerging from an ongoing discussion between National University of Singapore (NUS) Museum  curators and the artist since 2009 about the heterogeneous potentials of the museum object, the exhibition is an artist-installation that re-visits and adapts artefacts and writings from the exhibition Camping and Tramping Through The Colonial Archive: The Museum in Malaya (2011-2013) alongside newer artworks developed by the artist that include film, sculpture and works on paper.

The guiding principle being a form of aesthetic cannibalism, speculative in its method and oscillating between formats, the site-specific installation reveals the contingent rules and contextual considerations of the colonial museum in Malaya as it came to be framed in the 19th century and the particular interpretative technologies and translationary mediums that continue to murmur a discourse in the contemporary postcolonial present.

The exhibition will run until January 31 2014. Admission is free.

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