✷ Dior Interviews & Press (2024) ✷ Harper’s Bazaar Singapore Digital Cover (2023)✷ Plural Art Mag Interview (2023)
✷ VOGUE Singapore Interview (2021)
Three of the brightest young talents in Singapore’s art world tell us about making work with meaning and how the personal can be the most profound.
BY JEFFREY YAN - PUBLISHED 23 NOV 2023
More than politics or economics or any of the other forces that make the world go round, it is art that functions as society’s mirror–reflecting back to us who and where we are as a people at any one time. While still in its nascent stage, the art scene in Singapore is slowly but steadily growing. Here, we profile three young artists who are bringing new voices and perspectives to the discourse. There is Israfil Ridhwan, who works in the age-old medium of oil painting but with an entirely contemporary take on masculinity; Samuel Xun, a fashion designer turned multidisciplinary visual artist whose work spans sculpture, installation and text; and Andre Wee, a digital illustrator who also creates 3D, VR (virtual reality) and AR (augmented reality) art. They tell us about what drives their creative impulses and what they want to say with their work.
The 29-year-old trained as a pattern cutter but even when he was in fashion, the works he created were more like soft sculptures rather than wearable clothing. Over the years, Xun has pivoted into making art but has continued working with textiles. “I like that tactile quality and that sense of familiarity— the fact that these are things we put on our bodies every day.”
The shift in mediums came about because Xun isn’t the kind to do the same thing over and over again. “I like to keep things interesting by continually experimenting. I try to input something new into something that I know so that the end result becomes this mishmash of backgrounds and techniques. I feel like my sculptures are not necessarily what you imagine when you think of sculptures.” They are often pink and sparkly, consisting of abstract lines and curves that bring to mind the idea of tension and relief. They come with highly evocative titles like “I’d Love to See You Fall Again” and “You’re Repeating the Same Mistakes.”
Although they are abstract and open for interpretation, I do use titles to lead the viewer somewhere and to form some sort of empathetic connection. “I like the idea of using wordplay, especially in titles, to give an open-endedness to the work, and to allow the viewer to unload themselves onto the work.”
Editor-in-Chief: Kenneth Goh
Photographed by Cher Him
Styled and written by Jeffrey Yan
Makeup and hair: Wee Ming using Chanel Beauty and Schwarzkopf Professional
Photographer’s assistant: May Chong
Stylist’s assistants: Larissa Wong, Caleb Lim