ABOUT THE WORK

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Offshoreart.co was a project by Kathleen Ditzig, Robin Lynch and Debbie Ding which explored Singapore as a mid-shore/offshore jurisdiction for the international art market. In a recent article by Hito Steyerl, titled “Duty-Free Art,” Steyerl included a section on the major freeport in Singapore, which opened in 2009. Steyerl described this zone as one of the “prime spaces for contemporary art” as it functions as “an offshore or extraterritorial museum.” The freeport becomes a space which appears to be extra-state, allowing for the sheltering of valuable artworks from taxation through a cloudy line in jurisdictions. However, it nonetheless still functions as a vital point for bringing in capital and traffic into Singapore from the international community.

Shifting the lens of Singapore’s inclusion in the international art world away from discourses of difference and multi-cultural inclusion to the infrastructure and services that it provides the (art)world, offshoreart.co investigated infrastructure of the offshore such as the Freeport as a tactical nexus point for market and regional development.

ARTWORK IMAGES
EXHIBITION VIEW