Dancing with the Cosmos: Three Decades of Work from Kumari Nahappan is a solo exhibition surveying prominent Singaporean artist Kumari Nahappan’s three-decade-long artistic practice, curated by John Z.W. Tung. This showcase will be the first of the museum’s upcoming line-up of programmes at its new premise, featuring over 50 works which include Nahappan’s monumental site-specific installations, paintings and sculptures, some of which are re-creations of past iterations that have not been seen by the public since the mid-1990s.
Inspired by the Hindu cosmological notion of cyclical time, Dancing with the Cosmos organises the artworks not chronologically but by colour, allowing visitors to witness the diverse yet interconnected nature of Nahappan’s practice. Nature, rituals, time and space are themes that have long been part of Nahappan’s works and are also encapsulated throughout the exhibition. Each intimate space reflects specific colours that take prominence at various periods of Nahappan’s practice, representative of a diversity of themes and a recurrence of Nahappan’s interests over an expanse of time.
Characterised by constant evolution, Nahappan’s varied employment of materiality from organic matter to man-made structures and found objects breathes new life into her pieces, allowing them to transcend two-dimensional visuality and engage with the senses on multiple levels. Immersing in Nahappan’s fields of colour, Dancing with the Cosmos: Three Decades of Work from Kumari Nahappan allows visitors to contend with the existence of these countless universes and their cycles.
Venue: The Private Museum Singapore, 11 Upper Wilkie Rd, Singapore
When: 31 Aug - 22 Oct 2023,
