In the final week of her Curatorial & Research Residency at SAM, Berny Tan presented closing reflections that situate her residency project, Page Break, within her larger practice. As a bookmark allows a reader to keep track of their progress – and return to significant pages encountered before – Berny will take stock of her growth as both an artist and an independent curator, particularly over the past two years. Her talk will attempt to draw interdisciplinary connections between seemingly disparate projects, mapping her artistic and curatorial approaches as an extended engagement with ‘the literary’ and its related gestures.
Berny’s Page Break was a work-in-progress that has been evolving over a three-month residency in EX-SITU, a dedicated space at SAM that surveys novel approaches to curatorial practice. Presented as part of Singapore Biennale 2022 named Natasha, the Page Break looks at how everyday environments, objects, and phenomena are explored through the medium of the art book. The project has been functioning as a hybrid open studio that hosts small-scale exhibitions, an art book library, and occasional programmes, featuring artists and designers who make art books that examine the otherwise ordinary.