image © designboom

thai artist arin rungjang’s presentation at the 2011 singapore art biennale is an interactive installation fully furnished from ikea. after spending time traveling and interviewing thai migrant workers across singapore, the room presents anecdotes and objects of their personal stories as a public discussion for those that occupy the room during the biennale.

rungjung also invited the workers to come and trade their home furnishings for the ikea furniture, further transforming the piece through its own lifetime. the artist seeks to reference the workers’ social and economic mobility and create a dialogue about the tension between the singularity of lived experience and the standardized realities of global consumer capitalism.

singapore art biennale 2011: arin rungjang image © designboom

singapore art biennale 2011: arin rungjang image © designboom

singapore art biennale 2011: arin rungjang image © designboom

singapore art biennale 2011: arin rungjang image © designboomarun rungjang (b. 1975) lives and works in bangkok, thailand.

— in its third edition, the singapore biennale (SB2011) is led by artistic director matthew ngui and curators russell storer and trevor smith, and is organized by the singapore art museum (SAM) of the national heritage board and supported by the national arts council, singapore. open to the public from march 13 to may 15, 2011.

as the leading biennale in southeast asia, SB2011 situates contemporary art from singapore and southeast asia within a broad international conversation. the title ‘open house’ is conceived not as a theme but as an invitation or ‘open doors’ onto contemporary artistic practice. artists’ practices are not simply grounded in describing or portraying subjects in the world, but are often actual attempts to exchange information, translate experiences and trade places and perspectives. ‘open house’ suggests the crossing of thresholds between public and private, where boundaries and borders are made permeable. it is in this fluid space that contemporary art often emerges, out of a need to bridge the gaps between the experiential and the psychological, and between social and political hierarchies.