Lost & Found: Embodied Archive

Lost & Found: Embodied Archive unpacks how artists radically re-envision the body as a reservoir of memory. This reservoir retains convergences of the past and present while offering the possibility of new encounters.

The participating artists demonstrate how memory is ingrained in history by incorporating physical encounters into their artworks. This is accomplished through a variety of bodily manifestations that use the body as a historical informant and a means of personalising social and cultural experiences. In making space for what lies in the body, these works choreograph our encounters with them, activating us as viewers.

Refusing to remain static, Lost & Found: Embodied Archive embraces the process of becoming by making space for the live nature of performative works. Many of the artists whose works are on display in this gallery have conceptualised performances, workshops and talks. The exhibition will unfurl slowly over the month as works are activated in turn, creating an intentional space for movement, rhythm and reflection.

Lost & Found: Embodied Archive forms the second pillar of Lost & Found, a multi-year curatorial study on the interplay between artistic practices, memory and the notion of the archive. When one thinks of an archive, what often intuitively comes to mind is a physical site with material objects, records and documents. This project seeks to expand on that understanding by inviting viewers to consider the body as an archive.

Banner image: Lee Kang Seung, Skin, 2024. Image courtesy of the artist and Commonwealth and Council, Los Angeles; Gallery Hyundai, Seoul; Alexander Gray Associates, New York.

about the artists

Au Sow Yee and Chen Yow-Ruu (Her Lab Studio)
As an artistic duo coming from different artistic and cultural backgrounds, Au Sow Yee (b. 1978, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia) and Chen Yow-Ruu (b. 1984, Kaohsiung, Taiwan) have collaborated in different projects since 2017, but also working independently.

Au Sow Yee’s works integrate moving image, conceptual art, installation and theatrical settings to create artworks that possess a unique sense of space and time. She explores our perceptions of images and image making, and their relationship to history, politics, and power. Au’s recent research includes post-colonialism and the Cold War as well as folklore, popular culture such as alternative film history, genre films, music and the undercurrents of historiography. Au’s works utilize humorous, poetic and sometimes fractured ways to construct dialectically complex narrative.

Chen Yow-Ruu is a theatre director, performer, photographer and aerial yoga teacher. She received her MFA degree in Directing from the Taipei National University of the Arts. Her works often integrate local environment, using sound, video, installation and live performances as creative tactics. She likes to use a mixture of forms and sound for developing themes in her performative works.

The production of Bad Dream Rocking, a.k.a. The Rocking Malay(a) is supported by the NCAF.

Sam

Lee Kang Seung
Kang Seung Lee (b. 1978, Seoul) is a multidisciplinary artist who was born in Korea and now lives and works in Los Angeles. His work frequently engages the legacy of transnational queer histories, particularly as they intersect with art history. Lee’s work has been included in international exhibitions such as the 60th Venice Biennale (2024); Made in LA at Hammer Museum (2023); New Museum Triennial (2021); and Gwangju Biennale (2021). His work is in the collections of Guggenheim Museum, New York; Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; LACMA, Los Angeles; MASP, São Paulo; MMCA, Seoul; RISD Museum, Providence; Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles; among others.

Tiyan Baker
Tiyan Baker (b. 1989, Garramilla/Darwin, Australia) is an artist who works with installation, photography, video and sculpture. Her practice draws on historical research, language, digital processes and material play to trace unseen relationships between words, place and stories. Centring her Bidayǔh culture in her works, Baker is also interested in things she has unknowingly inherited. Living far from native lands, culture and family, in the midst of the (re)colonisation of Borneo, she explores all that can be mistranslated or lost, and what can manifest in its place. She has shown her works widely across Australia, and is the winner of the 2022 National Photography Prize awarded by the Murray Art Museum Albury.

She was born and raised on the Larrakia lands known as Darwin and currently lives and works on the Awabakal and Worimi lands known as Newcastle, Australia.

Tuguldur Yondonjamts
Tuguldur Yondonjamts (b. 1977, Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia) views his works as a fictional investigation into diverse elements of life, language, and myth. He develops an aesthetic that evolves from both observed evidence and dreams. With an interest in the animal world, he decodes their messages through books, drawings, sculpture, video, and sound, exploring the dynamic between tamed and untamed worlds. Yondonjamts has participated in the Thailand Biennale, Chiang Rai (2023), the 13th Gwangju Biennale (2020), and the Asian Art Biennale (2021), among others. His works are included in the collections of the Whitney Museum of American Art, Francis J. Greenburger, and others.

Gregory Halili
Gregory Halili (b. 1975, Manila, the Philippines) carves and paints mother-of-pearl shells, creating memento moris. He received his BFA from the University of the Arts in Philadelphia and spent 25 years in the USA before returning to the Philippines. His work focuses on the art of miniatures, and he is interested in notions of memory, life, death and cycles. His work has appeared in numerous exhibitions and shows, including the Hammond Museum and Sculpture Garden (Salem, New York, 2001), Butler Institute of American Art (Youngstown, Ohio, USA, 2002), John Michael Kohler Arts Center (Sheboygan, Wisconsin, USA, 2003–2004), Nancy Hoffman Gallery (New York, 2014) and Silverlens Gallery (Singapore, 2015), and in the Philippines at the Ayala Museum (Makati City, 2005), Jorge B. Vargas Museum (University of the Philippines in Quezon City, 2006), West Gallery (Quezon City, 2011) and Silverlens Gallery (Makati City, 2014). He lives and works in Cavite, the Philippines.

Albert Yonathan Setyawan
Albert Yonathan Setyawan (b. 1983, Bandung, Indonesia) graduated from Bandung Institute of Technology with an MFA in Ceramics in 2012. Following that, he moved to Kyoto, Japan, to continue his research and training in contemporary ceramic art at Kyoto Seika University, from which he received his doctoral degree in 2020. He has participated in several major exhibitions such as the 55th Venice Biennale (2013); SUNSHOWER: Contemporary Art from Southeast Asia 1980s to Nowat Mori Art Museum, Tokyo, Japan (2017); and Contemporary Worlds: Indonesia at the National Gallery of Australia, Canberra, Australia (2019). Setyawan has undertaken artist residencies at Canberra’s Strathnairn Arts Association, Australia (2016); and The Japan Foundation at Shigaraki Ceramics Cultural Park, Shiga, Japan (2009). His works are in the collections of Mori Art Museum, Tokyo, Japan; National Gallery of Australia, Canberra, Australia; Tumurun Private Museum, Solo, Indonesia; POLA Museum Annex, Tokyo, Japan; OHD Museum, Magelang, Indonesia; Museum of Modern Ceramic Art, Gifu, Japan; Singapore Art Museum, Singapore; and Shigaraki Ceramic Cultural Park, Shiga, Japan. Setyawan has built his artistic practice mainly in the field of contemporary ceramic art; however, at the same time, he also translates his conceptual ideas into various mediums such as drawing, multi-media installation, performance, and video documentation. Setyawan currently lives and works in Tokyo, Japan.

Lee Wen
Lee Wen (b. 1957, Singapore) uses art to interrogate how culture and society is constructed. He was a pioneer performance artist in Singapore who dealt with themes of social identity, and is best known for his Yellow Man series of works. Since 1999, Lee has worked with Black Market International, an innovative, ground-breaking, utopian performance art “group” comprising artists from various countries and cultural backgrounds. Lee also initiated the Independent Archive in 2012 to develop documentation, research and resource sharing around ephemeral art manifestations in Singapore and beyond.