Three Filipino artists join Gajah Gallery's Dramatis Personae: 1001 Lives show in Singapore

Filipino artists Wawi Navarroza, Nona Garcia and Goldie Poblador are among 15 women artists in Dramatis Personae: 1001 Lives, a group exhibition curated by Joyce Toh at Gajah Gallery Singapore that runs until 29 November.

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Filipino artists Wawi Navarroza, Nona Garcia and Goldie Poblador are among 15 women artists from Southeast Asia and beyond featured in Dramatis Personae: 1001 Lives, a group exhibition at Gajah Gallery Singapore, DANAMIC reported. The show runs until 29 November.

Curated by Joyce Toh, formerly a senior curator at the Singapore Art Museum, the exhibition is described by the gallery as a theatre of selves, in which each artist acts as both actor and author. It draws on One Thousand and One Nights and its narrator, Scheherazade, who survives through storytelling, and reflects on the roles women inhabit while foregrounding their agency to shape their own identities.

Navarroza takes the theme most literally, naming her staged self-portrait after Scheherazade with the subtitle The Burden of Representation. In the work, the labels "ASIAN" and "ORIENTAL" lie at her feet like pageant sashes, an image DANAMIC called the sharpest single statement of the exhibition's argument.

Other artists include Suzann Victor and Sarah Choo Jing from Singapore, with participants from Malaysia, Indonesia, Vietnam, Myanmar and Thailand. Gajah Gallery, which also has spaces in Jakarta, Yogyakarta and Manila, is at 39 Keppel Road. A drawing and watercolour workshop led by Malaysian artist Kayleigh Goh is planned for Saturday 31 October, at S$5 per person with materials provided.