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At 112 years old, the Venice Biennale is the world's oldest contemporary arts exhibition, and is also widely considered to be the most prestigious. Call them the Oscars of the arts world.
Countries pull out all the stops to attract the attention of attendees — a who's who of the arts world — using tactics ranging from laying out a generous supply of prosecco (Italian champagne), caviar and tiramisu to hiring jazz bands to perform.
Singapore is no exception.
The last time it participated in the Venice Biennale in 2005, Asia Pacific Breweries sponsored the alcohol and Tiger beer was sampled by more than 400 curators, artists and members of the international media while dance music blasted in the background.
It seems the party left a deeper impression than the artwork.
At the time, artist Lim Tzay Chuen had an ambitious plan to ship the Merlion to Venice, and when he couldn't get clearance from the authorities, the Singapore pavilion was left largely empty, albeit with writes-ups on how his project had failed.
Some applauded the implicit message about the difficulties of dealing with bureaucracy, but most found the work inaccessible.
This year, the party was less lavish, and it was the work that attracted the international spotlight.
Launched on Sunday, the biennale runs until Nov 21.
After eight months of using 1,200 lotuses to painstakingly "sculpt" a chandelier, artist Jason Lim smashed the work to bits at the opening of the Singapore pavilion on Thursday night, to gasps and applause from the crowd.
In Buddhism, the lotus symbolises rebirth, and the "death" of the chandelier marked the "birth" of the pavilion.
Themed "Figments, Fictions and Fantasies", the $700,000 Singapore pavilion was a dreamscape of man-dog creatures in cemeteries, a padded room that looked to have come straight out of an asylum and a futuristic sound dome with plush red cushions.
And thanks to an investment of more than $2.2 million over the past seven years, it seems contemporary art from Singapore is finally making an impression on the international stage.
Tsutomu Mizusawa, artistic director of the Yokohama Triennale, said: "Singapore has its own indigenous aspects of the arts and they are very sophisticated technologically. Hence, they are able to combine the two to create something unique."
But participating in the Venice Biennale isn't just about the arts, it's also about flexing a country's economic and political muscle.
China, for example, has been funnelling increasing amounts of money into the Venice Biennale "For too long, contemporary arts has been Euro-centric," said Zhang Qing, artistic director of the Shanghai Biennale.
"As China grows economically, it is natural that artistic expression will ride on the wave and for the world to pay greater attention to Chinese arts."
It's a view shared by Singapore.
"The Venice Biennale allows us to raise our Singapore brand to the world," said Edmund Cheng, chairman of the National Arts Council.
"To show that we have the economic success but, at the same time, we also achieve a lot on the artistic side."
And in a move that set the international arts community abuzz, China, South Korea, Japan, Singapore and Sydney have inked a deal to host the Asia Pacific Arts Compass next year.
The event is a tie up among four biennales and a triennale.
The mega arts fest kicks off in Australia — with the Sydney Biennale from June to September next year — and is quickly followed by the Gwangju Biennale in South Korea on Sept 5, the Shanghai Biennale on Sept 8, the Singapore Biennale on Sept 11 and the Yokohama Triennale in Japan on Sept 13.
The intention in having the events follow one another so closely is so that the members of the international arts community and VIPs can hop from one city to another for a rapid-fire take on what the Asian region has to offer in terms of art works.
Tour packages will also be developed to attract art lovers who tend to have money to spend on dining, partying and shopping. Last year, when Singapore, China and South Korea collaborated on their biennales, more than 20,000 people signed up for tour packages.
Singapore mooted the idea of the tie-ups in the belief that cooperation rather than competition is the way forward in efforts to raise Asia's cultural profile.
And it's about time, said Carolyn Christov Bakargiev, artistic director of the Sydney Biennale.
"The fact that performance art, for instance, has been in the history of many Asian countries and in Australia for a few thousand years is a very important thing," she said.
"So, what does it mean to be contemporary? What is art? I think our world needs to redefine itself and creating this Asia- Pacific circuit of contemporary art is part of this dialogue of re-reading art history." - TODAY/ra
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