link:
http://www.flashartonline.com/2016/02/networking-singapore/
The critics did not take kindly to the opening of the National Gallery. In the article on the National Gallery by Amy Lien and Enzo Camacho, it is argued that the promotional "trailer" for the grand unveiling of the NGS was lacking in "self-criticality". More precisely, it was "funny and aggravating in its claim to assimilate colonialism, governance, luxury consumption, modernity and art production". In other words, its lame, corporate, misdirected nature is betrayed by the lack of critical focus, right from the beginning.
Contextually, the opening of the National Gallery is not a de-politicized affair. The authors asserted that the National Gallery must be seen in the general climate of "deeply internalized repression of oppositional thinking", where the "subduing of the populace has made it a safe zone for transiting, for extracting and processing regional resources". The National Gallery, therefore, is simply another vehicle of state-directed control, where the consolidation of "regional cultural capital" is seen as a means of legitimization.
Tracing the rise of discourse on SEA contemporary art, the authors pointed to two salient periods: the 1970s, and the 1990s. The former period saw an increase in traction of critical discourse on SEA art, while the latter period witnessed a maturation of discourse. Together with discourse came large scale recurring exhibitions - Asia Pacific Triennial, Fukuoka Asian Art Triennale - which led to a formation of an "elite club" whose "transnational unity" could "compete with, supplement or critique other such frameworks (most notably, still, the "West"). Present in this series of argument is the implication that paradoxically, while functioning as regional locations of resistance, these elite groups undermined localized attempts at democratizing art.
The authors insist that it is important to see NGS's role in the broader regional context, where finance capital has allowed us to secure art owned by private collectors (also the "local elites") in other South East Asian countries. In this sense, the NGS is more like a "consolidator or debt collector" who purports to increase the status of SEA art while "severely limiting artistic agency" in the context of its own country. This line of thought builds up to the argument that the "National Gallery project is but one arm of an expansive top-down cultural agenda, geared towards maintaining status in a globalized neoliberal economic system".
