Performance artist returns to roots for new show

Singaporean artist Amanda Heng has been out of the spotlight for a while now, in part because she needed to care for her ailing mother. But the performance artist is back with a new exhibition, and it’s even more special because it revisits her roots as a printmaker — a history that many fans of her performance art might not know.
For Heng, printmaking presents a tactile body of work that lasts, whether through the prints themselves or the material they’re carved from, physical things that people can touch and hold in their hands, if they so choose. In performance art, the art itself is often fleeting, ephemeral, and very much in the moment. If the performance isn’t recorded in some manner, it is a onetime experience, shared only by the people who witness it at that moment. That is why it is so interesting for Heng to be so invested in these two different genres.
Heng participated in a one-month residency that expanded into nine months as a part of the undertaking of her project. As a part of her time at the Singapore Tyler Print Institute, she was able to investigate the facility and all of the bells and whistles it offers. However, the prints that she produced as a part of her time there engaged with her subjects and her audience in a way that is usually more suited for performance art pieces.
After conducting interviews and in-depth conversations with twelve people in varying degrees of closeness to her in her life, Heng helped them create highly personal works that explore everything from memories and stories to urban living and interpersonal relationships. It is the interaction between the artists and these people that is translated into the end works, the conversations preserved in the prints. The close relationships were just a part of the creative process.
Heng’s last major show was a look back at her body of work in 2011. She has since then traveled abroad for performance art, but especially with her mother, she felt like she needed to take a break after the 2011 exhibit. She also filled the time with teaching art classes.
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To read more about Amanda Heng’s legacy and upcoming show, go to http://www.businesstimes.com.sg/lifestyle/arts/swinging-by-the-past-for-her-latest-work.