Name: Lucia Cordeschi
Year: 2015
Thesis Title: Roberto Chabet’s Influence in Philippine Contemporary Art
Thesis Abstract
Conceptual artist Roberto Chabet has been a pivotal figure in the transition from modern to contemporary art in the Philippines. He was also a curator and for over thirty years he taught and mentored hundreds of aspiring artists, providing them with an alternative way of thinking of art and art making to the prevalent social realism or traditional figurative art. This study aims to understand his teaching methodology and assess its positive and negative impact over the artistic practice of his former students. In the process it proposes ways to conceptualize artistic influence when this does not translate into a distinctive technical style.
Name: Samantha Anne Segar
Year: 2015
Thesis Title: The Singapore Art Ecosystem: Conditions of Production and Evolution Toward a New Public Sphere
Thesis Abstract
This study looks at the conditions of production for contemporary visual art in Singapore in the first fifteen years of the twenty-first century in an effort to identify the salient public and private structures, issues, opinions, and tensions that have shaped and continue to influence the creation of art in the city-state. Privileging the transitional generation of local artists, i.e. artists born in the 1970s and early 1980s, the research will address the relationship between the artist and state, the artist and community, and consider recent exhibitions and artwork as exemplary. The analysis will consider how power is manifested and employed by both the artist and the state in the former’s on-going negotiation for autonomy, and strategies artists engage as they strive to actualise a new public sphere in Singapore.
Name: Harmeet Singh
Year: 2015
Thesis Title: The Issue of Lesbian Visibility in Contemporary Indian Cinema: A Comparative Study of Transnational & Mainstream Cinema
Thesis Abstract
Contemporary Indian cinema has undergone substantial changes over the last couple of decades. Many Bollywood movies have explored various social issues such as child marriage, polygamy, dowry system, caste system and terrorism. However, homosexuality, a taboo subject in Indian society and religion, has yet not been fully explored in Bollywood. Within the realm of homosexuality, lesbianism and not male homosexuality, has been the primary focus. The issues of women visibility are not clear in the mainstream cinema. In an attempt to circumvent this societal taboo, a more active exploration of this subject has been done in transnational Indian films. These films are hybrid films that straddle two dominant genres of cinema, namely Hollywood and Bollywood.
Name: Stephanie Xatart
Year: 2015
Thesis Title: The Materiality of the Art of Sopheap Pich: A Matter of Authenticity
Thesis Abstract
By focusing on the materiality of the art of Sopheap Pich, this study examines issues
surrounding the negotiation of fluid identities and proposes to reappraise materiality as a salient art historical concept. In particular the study discusses the various ways materiality can be envisaged and reappraised as a cogent tool for the art historian interested in the art produced today and in the recent past in Southeast Asia. It examines materials, artistic processes and aesthetics as generative of meaning as well as strategic tools for the artist to subvert and defy overly simplified categorisation. A critical reading of materiality questions the notion of authenticity, to produce multiple subjectivities by slipping between the categories of tradition, national, global and the authentic.
Name: Carrie Chia
Year: 2015
Thesis Title: Women Artists Group Exhibitions in Singapore (Terms and Conditions May Apply)
Thesis Abstract
This study aims to examine how different ‘terms and conditions’ impact why and how group exhibitions by women artists were organised in Singapore, particularly through the case studies of three women artist-initiated platforms/group exhibitions which were held from 1996 to 2014. The research will look into a chronological view of key events which have set the backdrop on how selected women artist group exhibitions were established; and take a feminist approach to uncover social/cultural perceptions of women which led to certain strategies and artistic expressions being adopted and surfaced in these group exhibitions.