10 April 2023—We Don’t Recognise What We Don’t See at STPI Creative Workshop & Gallery
Last week, STPI Creative Workshop & Gallery kicked off ‘We Don’t Recognise What We Don’t See.’ Curated by Hans Ulrich Obrist, the show features 40 compelling works by Rirkrit Tiravanija.
Intent on creating an interactive exhibition, the artist took his practice to new heights. Visitors can pick up UV torchlights and shine them on works to reveal animals (extinct or otherwise); reflecting the artist’s concern for the environment, the extinction of certain species, and humankind’s destruction of the natural world.
There’s even a looming crimson wall where you’re invited to literally make your mark on the artwork, by pressing your hand against it and leaving an imprint.
The poetic presentation left us in two minds. While there was a certain thrill in uncovering images of animals printed on the works, like a detective following a mystery trail, the exhibition was also equally sobering as it foregrounded humanity’s ruinous legacy on the natural world.
Check out the photographs below for a glimpse of the exhibition!
Rirkrit Tiravanija: We Don’t Recognise What We Don’t See runs at STPI Creative Workshop & Gallery from 8 April – 4 June 2023.
The facade of STPI Creative Workshop & Gallery at Robertson Quay.The exhibition view of the show, featuring metal panels depicting animal species that have gone extinct. You’ll see species like the dodo alongside certain mammals and butterflies.At the memorial, visitors are invited to grab a piece of paper and try their hand at the frottage technique. Visitors are then invited to take their drawings back with them and consider how they are ‘collecting’ and gaining knowledge about these extinct species. This parallels how human civilisation, in its drive to categorise the natural world, exploits it.The artist shining a UV torchlight at untitled 2020 (we are not your pet), 2023. The works consist of two panels depicting an Old Masters painting, with certain sections of the work blanked out. Rirkrit Tiravanija, untitled 2020 (we are not your pet), 2023 (post-UV light). Shining a UV light over blocked-out sections of the painting reveals a rhino with a skeletal skull, echoing the rhino that’s present in the original version of the work. The scene features European aristocrats leaning into a pen and looking at a live rhino Clara, who was on show at a Venetian carnival. This echoes how ‘exotic’ animal specimens were once paraded around for the sake of entertainment. Photo courtesy of the artist and STPI – Creative Workshop & Gallery, Singapore. The artist shining the UV torch on a painting referencing Jan Bruegehel the Elder’s The Temptation in the Garden of Eden. While Brueghel’s traditional version is teeming with birds, tigers, horses and more, Tiravanija’s take is stripped of all animals. With the work, the artist comments on how we fail to recognise what we don’t see, which in this case, is what the show’s catalogue calls the “looming threat of extinction.”Another large artwork reveals a leopard once UV light illuminates it.(Left) Over at the gift shop, visitors can drop off their shirts to be tie-dyed and have the exhibition title printed on them. (Right) Books about Tiravanija’s practice over at STPI’s gift shop.
