Ota Fine Arts presents “We are home and everywhere”, a solo exhibition by Singaporean artist Zai Kuning, his debut with the gallery. Having worked with an array of sculpture, installation, painting and drawing, experimental sound and music, video, film, performance art, dance and theatre for more than two decades, Kuning resists convenient categorical claims to his art-making. Today he is considered one of the most versatile artists working in the region, and a pioneer of avant-garde practice in Singapore.

After an extended break with the visual arts, Kuning returns to present a new body of work informed by his ongoing research on the Orang Laut -- “sea gypsies” or nomadic indigenous fishermen living in the Riau Archipelago -- and the survivors of the massive earthquake, tsunami and Fukushima-Daiichi nuclear disaster of 2011. Kuning comments on how these groups have been dictated by external circumstances beyond their control, have lost their homes, and are in search of a place of rest where they can rebuild their lives.

Thus both communities -- though relatively far-removed from each other -- have resonated with Kuning’s own personal journey, and he has spent time living intermittently between Tokyo, Singapore and Riau. Throughout his travels, from being constantly uprooted and moving from one place to another, his work has come to reflect upon issues of displacement and rupture.

With objects made primarily with beeswax, a material that has been perfected by nature to create a safe haven for honey bees, Kuning iterates these socio-political, religious and environmental concerns through the poetic and the allegorical.

-Ota Fine Arts Singapore

Image: © Zai Kuning
Courtesy of the artist and Ota Fine Arts Singapore