Shabbir Hussain Mustafa 2016/17
‘Curators in Residence’ grant scheme organised by KfW Stiftung in collaboration with DAAD Artists-in-Berlin Programme
Shabbir Hussain Mustafa (born 1984 in Colombo/Sri Lanka, lives and works in Singapore) curated SEA STATE featuring artist Charles Lim Yi Yong for the Singapore Pavilion at the 56th Venice Biennale. He is Senior Curator at the National Gallery Singapore, where he currently heads the curatorial team overseeing Between Declarations and Dreams, a long-term exhibition that surveys art about the region from the 19th century to present day. From 2013-2015, he was lead curator of Siapa Nama Kamu? (in Malay, What is Your Name?), the Gallery’s other long-term exhibition that focuses on art in Singapore from the late 19th century onwards. Much of his work at the Gallery involves meditating upon how time and the modern transact in a region, we refer to as ‘Southeast Asia’. He was formerly curator at the National University of Singapore Museum (NUS Museum), where his approach centred on deploying archival texts as ploys in engaging different modes of thinking and writing. It was at NUS Museum that he initiated the critically acclaimed accumulative projects Camping and Tramping through The Colonial Archive: The Museum in Malaya (2011), The Sufi and The Bearded Man: Remembering a Keramat in Contemporary Singapore (2010) and co-conceived the experimental space prep room | things that may or may not happen (2012-ongoing). In 2013, he curated In Search of Raffles’ Light | An Art Project with Charles Lim, a three-year collaboration with the artist that tracked the immaterial, mundane and irreconcilable traces surrounding Singapore’s fractured relationship with the sea. Shabbir Hussain writes often, at times about the methodological considerations for the rethinking of curatorial practice in Singapore and is a member of the International Association of Art Critics, Singapore Section.
Event with Shabbir Hussain Mustafa on his curatorial practice:
26 May 2017, 12am
Hochschule für Grafik und Buchkunst Leipzig - Academy of Visual Arts (HGB), Leipzig
Lecture by Shabbir Hussain Mustafa, "Pyramid of Souls:Some Fragmentary Notes from Southeast Asia":
29 June 2017, 7pm
daadgalerie Studio, Berlin