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Artists of the world unite! Make art, not money! Up with impressionism and down with consumerism!
While these might not be among the slogans shouted by opponents of the World Bank/International Monetary Fund (IMF) meetings here, they are part of the message some participants in the inaugural Singapore Biennale will be trying to put across in their art.
After all, the list of participants includes artists who are known for works that question the status quo.
There is Dutch artist IEPE, for example, whose 1999-2000 performance piece, Joker, saw him string barrier tape across major intersections in Berlin and Tokyo, bringing traffic to a standstill.
Then there is American Barbara Kruger, who literally makes bold statements by featuring phrases such as "I shop therefore I am" in her art, and Japan's Hiroyuki Matsukage, who encourages people to scream at a photograph in one work and witness him bloodying his face and arms with glass shards in another.
At first glance, the other works that these and other artists will instead be exhibiting in the biennale - which runs from Sep 4 to Nov 12 - may seem safer than that: All are built around the rather sanguine theme of belief.
IEPE will be putting up a "miracle tree" that promises to rain on art lovers while Matsukage will ask audiences to share in the glory and despair of his desire to be a star.
But before anyone suggests that these "protest artists" have been muzzled, the curators of the biennale and the artists themselves say the works have plenty of bite and protest everything from war-mongering and censorship to rampant capitalism.
Dealing with sensitive issues through art has never been an easy thing to do in Singapore.
Just ask Matija Milkovic Biloslav of Slovenia, an artist and participant in an art camp last year at LaSalle-SIA College of the Arts.
Biloslav produced a piece featuring a dozen nooses hanging from the ceiling and upturned stools beneath to make reference to Australian drug trafficker Nguyen Tuong Van's execution in December last year.
The title of the piece - I am going to send you to a better place than this. God bless you - is the phrase the hangman utters prior to opening the "trapdoor" during an execution.
The work attracted the attention of the international media, prompting various Australian media to wrongly accuse the institution of having altered the work by taking out a reference to Nguyen's prison number, C856.
The institution said in a press statement at the time that "it is wholly against LaSalle-SIA's philosophy to engage in activities that stifle or suppress artistic expression".
Despite the existence of certain sensitivities here, curators and organisers behind the Singapore Biennale reassured TODAY that no attempts were made to steer artists away from controversial themes or to censor their works.
"Curators don't work within guidelines or rules with artists. That's not the way it happens," said curator Sharmini Pereira. "We had rough discussions with them, but it was more about issues like where their work will be shown and the medium to be used."
This was confirmed by Singapore artist Jason Wee, whose work 1987 will be exhibited at City Hall as part of the biennale.
One of the more controversial pieces on display, the work deals with Operation Spectrum, where members of an alleged Marxist conspiracy were detained by the Internal Security Department in 1987.
1987 is also linked to the death of Wee's grandmother the same year.
"The curators knew my subject matter right from the start and the only question they had for me was how I was presenting my work," he said. "Other than that, if they weren't entirely comfortable with my work, they certainly didn't show it."
In fact, even at the selection stage, Wee had the sense that the curators and organisers of the event were keen to exhibit art with the power to provoke.
"I knew I wasn't going to be the only one," he said. "With other artists like Barbara Kruger and Lim Tzay Chuen in the line-up, I knew the curators would actually be looking for more critical works."
Works such as Wee's that comment on the political situation in Singapore are joined in the biennale by those that address issues such as capitalism and, specifically, the World Bank/IMF meetings that will be held here from Sept 11 to 19.
A gold ingot inscribed with the words "The Diversity is Value", which will be displayed at City Hall, is Iranian artist Hossein Golba's contribution to the event. The piece can be seen as a criticism of commercialism and a dig at the activities of institutions such as the IMF and World Bank.
Jonathan Allen's Tommy Angel #16, which features an image of the artist on an American dollar bill, also satirises the worship of money and is an expression of the artist's conviction that the circulation of paper money - with its divine symbols such as the all-seeing eye and messages such as "In God We Trust" - can be seen as a subtle strategy to promote Christianity and religious belief.
Tommy Angel #16 is distinctive for another, highly unusual, reason: Rather than being exhibited, copies of the work in the form of faux banknotes will be placed surreptitiously in people's pockets by the artist himself.
Then there is New Zealand artist Daniel Malone's work Steal This Smile! :), which is based on a 1967 peace demonstration in Washington that saw about 35,000 anti-war protesters attempt to levitate the Pentagon through meditation. Malone has said his work is meant to put a human face on large-scale events such as the IMF/World Bank meetings.
Are the connections too subtle? These and many other works in the biennale may be intended as forms of protest, but that didn't mean they had to be in-your-face, said curator Roger McDonald.
"You'll definitely find hints and suggestions of protest but none that hit you on the head," said McDonald.
"After all, the nature of protests has changed over time. Can we protest effectively? Art can be used to find the different forms and avenues to do so."
Think micro, not just macro
Many of the practitioners and art critics that TODAY spoke to recommended that artists become even more responsive to the world around them.
Instead of dealing only with broad issues such as terrorism in their art, they were encouraged to do work that addresses specific events and situations.
"When a controversy happens in the course of the biennale - if there are street demonstrations during the World Bank and IMF meetings - how will the artists respond?" said art critic Lee Weng Choy, artistic co-director of The Substation.
"If art is a conversation, then it's not just about making statements through one's work in the exhibition, but continuing to respond to fluid and dynamic situations."
Biennale director Low Kee Hong felt that artists were slowly but surely doing just that: Going beyond works that are rooted in the past and producing art that has the feel of having been ripped from today's headlines.
"What is interesting for me is that artists are reflecting on events of the past five years - what has been happening around the world - to explore why we do what we do," he said. "That is encouraging." - TODAY
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