Art Stage Singapore, Southeast Asia’s flagship art fair, will return on 21 through 24 January 2016 with a bold new vision for contemporary art from the region. In today’s dramatically changing art world, the Fair’s sixth edition continues to be innovative in market development by matchmaking segmented regional markets and encouraging dialogues about contemporary art. Through its latest programme, Art Stage Singapore references the Roman forum or the agora of ancient Greece, thus positioning the Fair as an intersection that facilitates not merely the exchange of art, but also of ideas.
In its 2016 edition, Art Stage Singapore will introduce the Southeast Asia Forum, a thematic programme that draws attention to contemporary art’s significant place in the blueprint of modern society and the central role the artist plays in the context of Southeast Asia.
An extension of the Southeast Asia Platform exhibitions at the Fair from 2014 to 2015, the Forum aims to emphasise the balance between art, commerce and content by taking discussions beyond the artistic and into larger society.
The inaugural Southeast Asia Forum is titled Seismograph: Sensing the City – Art In the Urban Age. Comprising two symbiotic parts – an exhibition and a talk series, it is centred on the theme of urbanization and explores the role of artists as seismographs of society’s pulses.