TrAIN

Current PhD - Circumventing Closure: Transnational Manoeuvre(ing)s

Erika Tan
Becoming, 2006
Still from 6 channel site-responsive video installation, Singapore Biennale
Courtesy and © the artist.

My line of inquiry is to investigate the potential of the transnational and translational as artistic and curatorial strategies, to intervene within received narratives of nation, community, citizenship and identity both within and across communities. Based primarily in the UK, but originally from Singapore, my status as an artist is often framed by current UK ‘cultural diversity’ and ‘inclusion’ directives, as issued by the DCMS (Department of Culture, Media, and Sport), and interpreted by The Arts Council England and its funding recipients (where further interpretation takes place).

These policies (e.g. Decibel) have in recent years come to shape much of the way in which my works as an artist and curator are funded, what expectations are made by commissioning bodies and furthermore, how the work is received and perceived. In addition to these ‘localised’ agendas and frameworks, my research questions how these agendas, and the work produced within them, interact with other frameworks created by the globalisation of the art market, the development of international biennales, and the continued fetishisation of other places and the ‘authentic other’.

The thesis seeks to disentangle production, process and context for the ‘culturally diverse’ artist within a transnational framework of contemporary art practice, and argues that it is where the local and the global collide or coincide that new strategies for intervention or manoeuvering might develop. My PhD research is structured to explore this in more depth through using my own work as case studies as well as identifying other practioners whose work engages with similar concerns.