Ute Meta Bauer
Singapore
Bio-Cultural Diversity and Climate Migration, Climatic Changes, Cultural Landscapes, Environmental Politics
Ute Meta Bauer

Masi textiles on display at Suva Market, Suva, Fiji, 2023. Photo credits Kristy H.A. Kang.

Artist

Region
Singapore

Category
Biodiversity, Ecosystems and Livelihoods

Topics
Bio-Cultural Diversity and Climate Migration, Climatic Changes, Cultural Landscapes, Environmental Politics

Methodology
Curatorial

Ute Meta Bauer

Ute Meta Bauer is an educator and curator in the field of contemporary art and also the Principal Investigator on the MOE Tier 1 Academic Research Grant "Environmentally-Engaged Artistic Practices in South, Southeast Asia and the Pacific" from which this database was created. Since 2013, she has been the Founding Director of NTU Centre for Contemporary Art Singapore and a Professor in the School of Art, Design, and Media at Nanyang Technological University. Her decade long enquiry into the theme Climates.Habitats.Environments. draws on the rich cultural heritage of Asia and beyond to transcend disciplinary boundaries and linear histories to affirm the role of cultural production in the fight for environmental and social justice.

Projects

Trees of Life - Knowledge in Material

2018

Vivian Xu, Flat Spinning Machine, 2013-14, Teak wood, electronics, 42 x 27 x 22cm; Spatial Spinning Machine, 2017, Teak wood, glass, electronics, 30 x 43x 11.5cm. Trees of Life - Knowledge in Material, 21 July - 30 September 2018, NTU CCA Singapore. Courtesy the artist and NTU CCA Singapore.

Liang Shaoji, Lonely Cloud, 2016. Installation: wood, silk, cocoons, and steel pipes, 245 x 114cm. Trees of Life - Knowledge in Material, NTU CCA Singapore. Courtesy the artist, ShanghART Gallery and NTU CCA Singapore.

Phi Phi Oanh, Palimpset, 2013-18. Installation, dimensions variable. Trees of Life - Knowledge in Material, 21 July - 30 September 2018, NTU CCA Singapore. Courtesy the artist and NTU CCA Singapore.

Sopheap Pich, Valley Drip (Maroon Top), 2012. Bamboo, rattan, burlap, and beeswax with natural pigment. 160 x 120 x 8 cm; Red Grid, 2015. Bamboo, rattan, burlap, and beeswax with natural pigment. 200 x 200 x 8 cm.; Delta, 2008. Rattan and wire, 341 x 478 x 70cm, courtesy the MaGMA Collection. Trees of Life - Knowledge in Material, 21 July - 30 September 2018, NTU CCA Singapore. Courtesy the artist and NTU CCA Singapore.

Phi Phi Oanh, Palimpset, 2013-18. Installation, dimensions variable. Trees of Life - Knowledge in Material, 21 July - 30 September 2018, NTU CCA Singapore. Courtesy the artist and NTU CCA Singapore.

Trees of Life -- Knowledge in Material focuses on materials from four plants deeply rooted in Asia: indigo (Indigofera tinctoria), lacquer (Rhus succedanea and Melanorrhoea usitata), rattan (Calamoideae), and mulberry (Morus). The works trace the ongoing involvement with these plants in the artistic practices of Manish Nai (India) with indigo, Phi Phi Oanh (United States/Vietnam) with lacquer, Sopheap Pich (Cambodia) with rattan, and Liang Shaoji (China) and Vivian Xu (China) with mulberry silk. While the featured installations serve as a starting point to uncover the materiality of the chosen plants, the study of their natural and cultural DNA allows further exploration into their biological processes and diverse usages at their locale.

The artworks intertwine with selected research documents that address the complex histories and circulation, as well as the effects of human intervention on these natural resources. Starting from the properties and characteristics of the materials themselves, the project expands into their cultural representation and significance for communities and their crafts.

The longstanding social and cultural practices associated with indigo, lacquer, rattan, and mulberry silk have accumulated a vast repository of knowledge, whether formal or tacit. Beyond the format of the exhibition, topical seminars will be dedicated to each of the four materials, further investigating their social applications over centuries in terms of their materiality, cultural references, or expanded ecology, and as arising from technological advancements. The lectures, panels, talks, and workshops feature the participating artists, as well as craftsmen, scientists, ethnobotanists, anthropologists, scholars, and designers who are working with these materials and researching innovative applications. From the diverse perspectives offered by the contributors, the public programme excavates layers of meanings and reiterates the deeper role art and craft traditions have in supporting local communities and their ecosystems.

Topical Seminar: On Rattan - In Conversation: Sopheap Pich and Ute Meta Bauer, 2020

Sopheap Pich, whose work is among those featured in Trees of Life – Knowledge in Material, started working with natural materials, such as bamboo, rattan, burlap, beeswax, and earth pigments, in the early 2000s to create sculptural objects informed by themes of time, memory, and the body. This conversation with Ute Meta Bauer gives insight into his creative process and his long-term engagement with natural materials and local craftsmen.


The Oceanic

2017 - 2018

The Oceanic, an exhibition focusing on large-scale human interventions in oceanic ecospheres with contributions by 12 artists, filmmakers, composers, and researchers who engage with both the long cultural histories of Pacific Ocean archipelagos and their current conditions. As part of Thyssen-Bornemisza Art Contemporary–Academy’s (TBA21–Academy) The Current, an ongoing research initiative into pressing environmental, economic, and socio-political concerns, NTU CCA Singapore’s Founding Director Professor Ute Meta Bauer was invited to lead the project’s first cycle of expeditions from 2015–17. The featured contributors in The Oceanic are The Current Fellows who joined the expeditions on TBA21–Academy’s vessel Dardanella to Papua New Guinea (2015), French Polynesia (2016), and Fiji (2017).

The expedition to Papua New Guinea, with Laura Anderson Barbata (Mexico/United States), Tue Greenfort (Denmark/Germany), Newell Harry (Australia), and Jegan Vincent de Paul (Sri Lanka/Canada), took as a starting point the concept of the Kula Ring, a ceremonial exchange system practiced in the Trobriand Islands. The second excursion, to French Polynesia, titled Tuamotus, the Tahitian name for distant islands, included Nabil Ahmed (Bangladesh/United Kingdom), Atif Akin (Turkey/United States), PerMagnus Lindborg (Sweden/Singapore), and Filipa Ramos (Portugal/United Kingdom). The atolls Mururoa and Fangataufa were the sites for 193 nuclear tests between 1966 and 1996, despite being declared a biosphere reserve by UNESCO in 1977. Coinciding with the 50th anniversary of the first atomic weapons test on Mururoa, then considered a French colony in Polynesia, this expedition discussed the still neglected long-term impact of nuclear experiments in the Pacific on the populations and the environment. On the third and last expedition of this cycle, the Fijian practice of the Tabu/Tapu, where a community chief demarcates something as “sacred,” or “forbidden,” continued the enquiry on the Polynesian Rahui—a traditional rule system that in recent times became significant for marine conservation and resource management. This journey to the Fijian Lau Islands was joined by The Current Fellows Guigone Camus (France), Lisa Rave (United Kingdom/Germany), and Kristy H. A. Kang (United States/Singapore). Participating in all three expeditions was Armin Linke (Italy/Germany), who not only documented these journeys with his camera, but also questioned the role of image production in such unique yet loaded encounters.


Climate Crisis and Cultural Loss

2024

Masi textiles on display at Suva Market, Suva, Fiji, 2023. Photo credits Kristy H.A. Kang.

Burial grounds in Soliyaga Village, Beqa Island, Fiji, 2023. Photo credits Lisa Rave.

Port Vila, Vanuatu, after Cyclone Pam, 2015. Photo credits Vanuatu Cultural Centre and Further Arts.

This twofold exhibition marks the conclusion of the eponymous research project led by Principal Investigator Ute Meta Bauer at NTU ADM. The inquiry started by asking: how has the slow erosion of diverse, multicultural, and more-than-human ways of living over time impacted the environments in which we live, and what are the longer-term consequences on habitats? Can we begin again with culture, to induce a necessary paradigm shift in the way we think about and respond to the climate crisis? Extending connections and conversations seeded during the inaugural cycle of TBA21–Academy’s The Current fellowship programme led by Bauer from 2015 to 2018, Climate Crisis and Cultural Loss continues to build archipelagic networks across the Alliance of Small Island Developing States, deepening existing collaborations with Oceania Centre for Arts, Culture and Pacific Studies in Fiji, and developing new ones further in the South Pacific Ocean, through the art and media non-profit organisation Further Arts in Vanuatu.

Bridging conversations from the Pacific to Singapore in the Riau Archipelago, former fellows of TBA21–Academy’s The Current and current research collaborators artist Nabil Ahmed, social anthropologist Guigone Camus, artist Kristy H.A. Kang, legal scholar Hervé Raimana Lallemant-Moe, and artists Armin Linke and Lisa Rave, join Singapore-based researchers Co-Investigator Yun Sang-Ho and members of the Earth Observatory of Singapore – Remote Sensing Lab (EOS–RS), NTU ADM research staff Soh Kay Min and Ng Mei Jia, historian Jonathan Galka, and community organiser Firdaus Sani, as they explore the impacts of extreme weather, rising seas, climate displacement, ocean resource extraction, and the disappearance of material cultural traditions, occurring across what the visionary Pacific thinker Epeli Hau’ofa has termed “our sea of islands.” Featuring interviews, data visualisations, documentation, writings, and artisanal crafts made in collaboration with or generously gifted to the research team by knowledge bearers, community leaders, scientists, scholars, and artists, including writer and curator Frances Vaka’uta, masi artist Igatolo Latu,human rights defender Anne Pakoa and anthropologist Cynthia Chou, the exhibitions present the rich, complex, and multi-layered research findings accumulated over three years, since the Climate Crisis and Cultural Loss project first started in 2021.

At TBA21–Academy’s Ocean Space, the Climate Crisis and Cultural Loss research inquiry sits adjacent to the exhibition Restor(y)ing Oceania, comprising two new site-specific commissions by Latai Taumoepeau and Elisapeta Hinemoa Heta. Curated by Bougainville-born artist Taloi Havini, whose curatorial vision is guided by an ancestral call-and-response method, the exhibition materialises as a search for solidarity and kinship in uncertain times, in order to slow down the clock on extraction and counter it with reverence for the life of the Ocean.

At ADM Gallery, Climate Crisis and Cultural Loss is presented alongside the companion show Sensing Nature, curated by Gallery Director Michelle Ho. The exhibition showcases artists representing diverse disciplines, each offering their interpretation of the natural world and its intersection with urban life. Through reflection and experimentation, these works invite viewers to reassess our perceptions and behaviors toward the environment and phenomena beyond human influence. They advocate for a renewed understanding of society’s connection to nature and the land.

Climate Crisis and Cultural Loss is supported by the Ministry of Education, Singapore, under its Academic Research Fund Tier 2 grant. The research presentation at Ocean Space coincides with the 60th International Art Biennale in Venice, Italy, with public programmes taking place through the exhibition durations in both Venice and Singapore.


Biography

Ute Meta Bauer

Ute Meta Bauer is an educator and curator in the field of contemporary art. Since 2013, she has been Founding Director of NTU Centre for Contemporary Art Singapore and Professor in the School of Art, Design, and Media at Nanyang Technological University, where she co-chairs the Master in Museum Studies and Curatorial Practices. She is currently Principal Investigator for the three-year research project “Climate Crisis and Cultural Loss” (MOE AcRF Tier 2, 2021–24) and “Environmentally-Engaged Artistic Practices in South, Southeast Asia, and the Pacific” (MOE AcRF Tier 1, 2021–2024). Between 2015–2018, she was expedition leader of TBA21—Academy’s The Current (Papua New Guinea, French Polynesia, and Fiji). A pioneer in the fields of exhibition-making and pedagogy, Bauer’s intellectual and curatorial work in the past decade has focused on the nexus of Climates.Habitats.Environments., a groundbreaking research-driven institutional framework that has guided the work of the Centre for Contemporary Art since 2017 and which has birthed curatorial projects such as The Oceanic (2017/18), Tarek Atoui, The Ground: From the Land to the Sea (2018), Trees of Life: Knowledge in Material (2018), Jef Geys — Quadra Medicinale Singapore (2018/19), The Posthuman City: Climates. Habitats. Environments. (2019/20). Related to this, she has also published and co-edited The Impossibility of Mapping (Urban Asia) published by World Scientific (2020), Culture City. Culture Scape. co-published with Mapletree Investments (2021), Climates. Habitats. Environments. co-published with The MIT Press (2022), and a monograph Joan Jonas: Moving of the Land (2022) published by Walther König, Köln.

Videos

Symposium: Welcome Address by Professor Simon Redfern and Keynote Address by Professor Ute Meta Bauer, Environmentally-Engaged Artistic Practices Symposium, 2024

Welcomed by Professor Simon Redfern, Dean of the College of Science and an active volcanologist, this symposium brings together scientists and academics across various disciplines in conversation with artists to encourage further exchanges and collaboration between scientific and artistic research and practice.

Professor Ute Meta Bauer, Principal Investigator of this project, will focus on the increasing engagement of artists in the climate crisis and other stresses that impact habitats and environments. Drawing from an expansive network of artists, Bauer relays the potential and impact of environmentally-engaged artistic practice to navigate the complexity of climate change. As an exploration of this inquiry, the Environmentally-Engaged Artistic Practices database will be launched during the symposium. The ambition for this online tool is to provide an entry point to connect artists, climate scientists, researchers and policymakers in similar regions of study or areas of expertise to develop transdisciplinary research methods.

Symposium: In Conversation | Collaboration in Crisis: Technology in Disaster Response, Nashin Mahtani, Dr Sang-Ho Yun & Eunice Lacaste, Environmentally-Engaged Artistic Practices Symposium, 2024

Nashin Mahtani (Peta Bencana and Climate Emergency Software Alliance, Indonesia), Dr Sang-Ho Yun (Director, Remote Sensing Lab, Earth Observatory of Singapore; Associate Professor, Asian School of the Environment and School of Electric and Electronic Engineering, NTU, Singapore), moderated by Eunice Lacaste (PhD Candidate, NTU ADM). Previous collaborators Nashin Mahtani, and Dr Sang-Ho Yun, will discuss the applications of satellite technology for localised tracking of disasters through smartphones. Learn about their previous collaboration on disaster risk reduction in Indonesia and how they utilised technology to construct more equitable forms of climate risk response and adaptation to the region. This recording is part of the two-day symposium, "Environmentally-Engaged Artistic Practices in South, Southeast Asia and the Pacific" held at NTU Centre for Contemporary Art Singapore, supported by the Ministry of Education Academic Research Fund Tier 1 Project (RG39/21) and led by Principal Investigator, Professor Ute Meta Bauer. This symposium was organised by Professor Ute Meta Bauer and Research Assistant Angela Ricasio Hoten, School of Art, Design and Media, Nanyang Technological University Singapore with additional support from Eunice Lacaste, PhD Candidate at NTU ADM.

Symposium: In Conversation | Intersecting Ecosystems: Possibilities across the Arts and Sciences, Zen Teh, Ang Song Nian, Dr Ching Jianhong & Angela Ricasio Hoten, Environmentally-Engaged Artistic Practices Symposium, 2024

Ang Song Nian (Artist, Lecturer at NTU ADM, Singapore), Zen Teh (Artist, Singapore), Dr Ching Jianhong (Assistant Professor, Duke-NUS), moderated by Angela Ricasio Hoten (Research Assistant, NTU ADM) We bring together long-term collaborators, artist Zen Teh and scientist Dr Ching Jianhong alongside image-based artist and lecturer at the NTU School of Art, Design and Media, Ang Song Nian to discuss lens-based artistic practices and their application to data visualisation and scientific communication. Moderated by Angela Ricasio Hoten, research assistant on the Tier 1 grant, this panel will explore the ways that artistic practices enhance scientific enquiries, looking more precisely at how lens-based work can contribute to public discourse around topics such as haze. The panel will also discuss some of the challenges faced by artists and scientists to create distinctions between transdisciplinary, interdisciplinary and cross-disciplinary vernacular. This recording is part of the two-day symposium, "Environmentally-Engaged Artistic Practices in South, Southeast Asia and the Pacific" held at NTU Centre for Contemporary Art Singapore, supported by the Ministry of Education Academic Research Fund Tier 1 Project (RG39/21) and led by Principal Investigator, Professor Ute Meta Bauer. This symposium was organised by Professor Ute Meta Bauer and Research Assistant Angela Ricasio Hoten, School of Art, Design and Media, Nanyang Technological University Singapore with additional support from Eunice Lacaste, PhD Candidate at NTU ADM.

Topical Seminar: On Rattan - In Conversation: Sopheap Pich and Ute Meta Bauer, 2020

Sopheap Pich, whose work is among those featured in Trees of Life – Knowledge in Material, started working with natural materials, such as bamboo, rattan, burlap, beeswax, and earth pigments, in the early 2000s to create sculptural objects informed by themes of time, memory, and the body. This conversation with Ute Meta Bauer gives insight into his creative process and his long-term engagement with natural materials and local craftsmen.