As The West Slept
Artworks by Heman Chong, Fyerool Darma, Ho Rui An and Erika Tan

Heman Chong is an artist whose work is located at the intersection between image, performance, situations and writing. His practice can be read as an imagining, interrogation and sometimes intervention into infrastructure as an everyday medium of politics. His solo exhibitions include: Spirts in the Material World (Het Nieuwe Instituut, Rotterdam, Netherlands, 2019); fikitionfiktionfiktion (Weserburg Museum, Bremen, 2019). Legal Bookshop (Swiss Institute New York, USA, 2018); Never is a Promise (Calle Wright, Manila, Philippines, 2018); Because, the Night (72-13, Singapore, 2017); Ifs, Ands, Or Buts (Rockbund Art Museum, Shanghai, China, 2016); An Arm, A Leg and Other Stories (South London Gallery, london, England, 2015); Never, a Dull Moment (Art Sonje Center, Seoul, Korea, 2015); Correspondence(s) (P!, New York, USA, 2014); Calendars (2020–2096) (NUS Museum, Singapore, 2011); Common People and Other Stories (Art in General, New York, USA, 2007); The Sole Proprietor and Other Stories (Vitamin Creative Space, Guangzhou , China, 2007); Vexillogy, Cartography and Other Stories (Ellen de Bruijne Projects, Amsterdam, Netherlands, 2005); Snore louder if you can (The Substation, Singapore, 2004); and The Silver Sessions (Künstlerhaus Bethanien, Berlin, Germany, 2003). Chong is the co-director and founder (with Renée Staal) of The Library of Unread Books, a library made up of donated books previously unread by their owners. He is currently working on a novel, The Book of Drafts, which will be published by Polyparenthesis in 2020.

Fyerool Darma (b. 1987, Singapore) interrogates and complicates the cultural consumption of history in relation to contemporary markers of identity and class. His artefacts are based on an extensive visual vocabulary drawn from popular culture, literature, archives, the internet, and his own life. Recent solo exhibitions include Sunny, your smile ease the pain, Yeo Workshop, Singapore (2019) and the long-term research project After Ballads, NUS Museum, Singapore (2017-18). His work has been presented in group exhibitions such as 900mdpl’s Ghost of a thousand conversations in Kaliurang, Jogjakarta (Indonesia 2019), Asia Film Archive’s State of Motion: A Fear of Monsters and Lost and found: imagining new worlds, LASALLE’s Institute of Contemporary Arts Singapore (both Singapore, 2019); Fantasy Islands, Objectifs Centre of Photography, Singapore (2017); and An Atlas of Mirrors, Singapore Biennial (2016).

Ho Rui An is an artist and writer working in the intersections of contemporary art, cinema, performance and theory. He writes, talks and thinks around images, with an interest in investigating their emergence, transmission and disappearance within contexts of globalism and governance. He has presented projects at the Gwangju Biennale (2018), Yinchuan Biennale (2018), Jakarta Biennale (2017), Sharjah Biennial 13 (2017), Kochi-Muziris Biennale (2014), Haus de Kulturen der Welt, Berlin (2017), Jorge B. Vargas Museum and Filipiniana Research Center, Manila (2017), NTU Centre for Contemporary Art Singapore (2017), NUS Museum, Singapore (2016), Para Site, Hong Kong (2015) and Hessel Museum of Art and CCS Bard Galleries, Annandale-on-Hudson (2015). He is a recipient of the 2018 DAAD Berliner Künstlerprogramm. He lives and works in Singapore and Berlin.

Erika Tan is an artist, curator whose practice is primarily research-led. Recent research has focused on the postcolonial and transnational, working with archival artefacts, exhibition histories, received narratives, contested heritage, subjugated voices and the transnational movement of ideas, people and objects. Recent shows include: A Place in the World, NUA Gallery, Norwich; Unrealised commission, National Gallery, Singapore; On Attachments and Unknowns, Sa Sa Bassac, Phnom Penh, Cambodia; Diaspora Pavilion, (Venice Biennale 2017); Artist and Empire (Tate Touring, National Gallery Singapore 2016/7). She is a Lecturer on the B.A.Fine Arts 4D Pathway, Central Saint Martins, UAL; a founding member of Asia-Art-Activism currently based at Raven Row and was awarded the Stanley Picker Fellow in Fine Art 2018-2020.