Women United ART PRIZE 2023
Photography & Printmaking Category
finalist

ARTIST BIO

Sarah Choo Jing (b. 1990, Singapore) is known for her interdisciplinary approach to photography, video and installation. Her work depicts identifiable moments and characters within contemporary urban society suggesting a plethora of private and often solitary narratives. The artist is concerned with the gaze of the flaneur, voyeurism and the uncanny.
Choo lives and works in Singapore since completing her MFA at the Slade School of Art in London, in the Summer of 2015. Choo recently clinched the 3D Interactive award for the The Lumen Prize for Art and Technology 2021, and was shortlisted as a Finalist for the Audemars Piguet Art Commission for Art Basel 2020 and invited to present her practice at Le Brassus, Geneva in Switzerland. She clinched the Gold Award in the 2019 PX3 Prix de la Photographie Competition, the 2017 Perspectives 40 under 40 Award and came in First Place in the 2015 Moscow International Foto Awards. Choo was also awarded the ICON De Martell Cordon Bleu Photography Award and Kwek Leng Joo Prize of Excellence in Still Photography Award in 2013.
The artist has since exhibited internationally at The Asian Art Museum in San Francisco (2023), Turku Art Museum in Helsinki (2019), National Museum of Singapore (2017), Busan Museum of Art in Korea (2016), ArtParis at The Grand Palais in Paris (2015), the START Art Fair at The Saatchi Gallery in London (2015) and Photo London at The Somerset House in London (2015). Her works are collected by both private individuals and public institutions; including the Chrysler Museum of Art, Singapore Art Museum, National Museum of Singapore and The Arts Club Permanent Art Collection in London.

ARTIST STATEMENT

‘Dancing without Touching’ presents itself as an alternative discourse of movement and dance in the context of ‘entertainment’ worlds (often referred to as amusement parks) in early Singapore. The exhibition presents 5 subjects immersed in deliberately constructed ‘situations'.

Reflecting on themes of activation and authorship, subjects are given freehand to interpret, respond and perform within the site. All performances are definitive in the sense that each one is for the performer, tantamount to the work itself; equally, all performances are bound to be provisional in the sense that each performer knows he/she is deepening his/her own interpretation of the work. The invitation offers the performer the opportunity to challenge traditional and preconceived notions / stereotypes associated with his/her character.

Singapore