DEBBIE DING: BIOGRAPHY
Debbie Ding is a visual artist and technologist from Singapore. She reworks and reappropriates formal, qualitative approaches to collecting, labelling, organising, and interpreting assemblages of information – using this to open up possibilities for alternative constructions of knowledge.
Inquiries are sparked off by the unexpected discoveries and hidden labours of amateur explorers – whose voices are often concealed by the contemporary professionalisation of academic disciplines.
Prototyping is used as a conceptual strategy for artistic production, iteratively exploring potential breakthroughs and dead ends faced by amateur archaeologists, citizen social scientists, and machines (programmed to perform roles of cultural craftsmanship) in the pursuit of knowledge.
Works take the form of computer-aided investigations into archaeological and historical finds (eg: the former island of Pulau Saigon, 19th century colonial shipwrecks), studies of changing features within urban geography, and informal approaches to collecting and mapping.
04.48am at gmail.com
+65 8750 1790
EDUCATION
| 2013-2015 | MA Design Interactions Royal College of Art, London, UK. Distinction for Dissertion "Future Architectural Desires". National Arts Council Overseas Scholarship (Postgraduate). |
| 2003-2007 | BA (Hons) English Literature National University of Singapore. Minor in Gender Studies. |
SOLO SHOWS / COMMISSIONS
| 2017 | "Soil Works" For the President's Young Talent 2018 Exhibition Commission for Singapore Art Museum |
| 2017 | "War Fronts" For the Exhibition "After the Fall" Commission for and Joint Artist Residency with National Museum of Singapore (Singapore) and Australian War Memorial (Canberra, Australia) |
| 2016 | "Shelter" Singapore Biennale 2016 Commission for Singapore Art Museum Curated by Michael Lee. |
| 2015 | "The Library of Pulau Saigon" NUS Museum, National University of Singapore |
| 2013 | "A Survey of the Singapore Psychogeographical Society" Galerie Steph, Singapore |
| 2010 | "The Singapore River as a Psychogeographical Faultline" The Substation, Singapore |
SELECTED GROUP EXHIBITIONS / RESIDENCIES
| Sep 2018 | "Spaces" Ota Fine Arts (Singapore) Curated by Jodi Tan. |
| Dec 2017 | DiMoDA 2.0 SIGGRAPH Asia 2017 Art Gallery (Bangkok) Curated by Nhung Walsh, Indochina Arts Partnership Curated by Jodi Tan. |
| July 2017 | “How to Do/Undo…” Future Flux Festival 2017. (Rotterdam) Curated by Michelle Kasprzak. Curated by Jodi Tan. |
| Sep 2017 | "A Brief History of the Trapdoor" The Substation (Singapore) Curated by Joshua Comaroff. |
| Apr 2015 | "Je de cartes" Maison Salvan. (Labege, Toulouse) Curated by Paul De Sorbier.
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| Jun 2015 | "Exparte" Brick Lane Gallery. (London) Curated by Annie Jael Kwan.
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| Jul-Sept 2014 | Artist Residency Zentrum fur Kunst und Urbanistik (Berlin). |
| Jun 2014 | "Ghost on the Wire" Bermonsey Project (London) Curated by Gavin Maughfling and Suzanne de Emmony.
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| Mar 2014 | "Unearthed" Singapore Art Museum (Singapore) Curated by Tan Siu Li.
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| Apr 2013 | "Theo.do.lites" Institute of Contemporary Art Singapore. Curated by Kent Chan and Silke Schmickl.
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| Jan 2013 | "Engaging Perspectives: New Art from Singapore" Centre for Contemporary Art Singapore Curated by Eugene Tan.
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| Nov 2012 | "Primavera" Immanence (Paris) Curated by Valentine Meyer.
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| Sep-Dec 2012 | Dena Foundation Artist Residency Program Centre des Récollets (Paris) |
| Jul-Aug 2012 | Artist Exchange between The Substation (Singapore) and Seoul Art Space_Mullae (Seoul, South Korea). With Jeong Hee Woo.
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| 2012 | "Retroalimentacion": Interactive art from Southeast Asia (2012), Facultad de Artes, Universidad Autónoma del Estado de México (Toluca City, Mexico). |
SELECTED CONFERENCES / PROGRAMMES
| Mar 2016 | Presented "Ressurecting the archaeological ambiguities of Pulau Saigon, a former island in the Singapore River" at Asia Research Institute Symposium: Hard State, Soft City. (National University of Singapore) |
| Feb 2016 | Presented "Prototyping as strategy for artistic production" at Betwixt Festival (Singapore) |
| Oct 2015 | Presented “Alien Probes, Archaeological Ambiguities, and Un-forgetting Machines” at 13th Annual Conference of the Contemporary and Historical Archaeology in Theory Group (CHAT) 2015 (Sheffield, UK) |
| 1999 | Presented paper on “The Impact of IT in Education”, Humanities and Social Sciences Mentorship Programme 1999. |
| 1998 | Prototype for "Automatic Tape Dispenser" and "Door Hinge Cover", Innovation Programme 1998. My "Door Hinge Cover" won the Tan Kah Kee Young Inventor's Prize in 1999.
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