Kōrero
Hallucinating Time: artist Shubigi Rao and curator Vera Mey in conversation

Presented by Te Tuhi in partnership with Te Wai Ngutu Kākā, join Singaporean artist Shubigi Rao in conversation with Vera Mey, International Programme Director at Te Tuhi, at her exhibition, Pulp III: A Short Biography of the Banished Book.

Against the background of the exhibition and Rao’s ongoing project, Pulp III, they will discuss her artistic practice as closely linked to writing fiction, documenting history and reading, a process which Rao has likened to "hallucinating time".

Rao’s exhibition, Pulp III: A Short Biography of the Banished Book, takes the form of a book, film and paper maze, to explore the precarity and persistence of endangered languages, the futures of knowledge, public and alternative libraries, and the cosmopolitanism of regional print communities that have blossomed and waned in historic centres of print.

Rao’s artist book is available to purchase, exclusively at the exhibition

The talk between Rao and Vera Mey takes place within the exhibition space and is free and open to everyone, no booking required.

Artist and writer Shubigi Rao makes layered installations of books, etchings, drawings, pseudo-scientific machines, metaphysical puzzles, video, ideological board games, garbage, and archives, and has been exhibited and collected in Singapore and internationally. Her interests include archaeology, neuroscience, libraries, archival systems, histories and lies, literature and violence, ecologies and natural history.

Since 2014 she has been visiting public and private collections, libraries and archives globally for Pulp: A Short Biography of the Banished Book, a decade-long film, book and visual art project about the history of book destruction. As an artist in residence at CCA, Gillman Barracks, Singapore, she released her first book from the project in January 2016. It was shortlisted for the biennial Singapore Literature Prize 2018 (non-fiction).

The second book from the series won the Singapore Literature Prize (nonfiction) in 2020. The first instalment of the project, Written in the Margins, won the Juror's Choice Award at the APB Signature Art Prize 2018.