Exhibition Review: New Eden: Science Fiction Mythologies Transformed

When us Asian communities consume media, we do not expect ourselves to feel represented. We swoon at cookie-cutter characters and desperately try to find an inner shared spirit or feeling - some sort of similarity through an idealised image and idol worship. In the genre of Science Fiction, a Neptunian fog of novelty and innovation promises a gateway to escape human reality for even just for a moment. As the Industrial Revolution got popularised in the Western belt in its nascent stages, the Eurocentric creation of these characters in literature inspired by it created a standard that was impossible to achieve and find ourselves in. Its nature is elusive as it is exclusive. Singapore’s ArtScience Museum’s recent exhibition, New Eden: Science Fiction Mythologies Transformed challenges this underrepresentation, enlightening audiences on the neglected bodies through combining Asian philosophy and folklore with advanced science technology. 

Philippine Art Collective Club Ate’s video installation, titled Ex Nilalang: Balud (2015) is one of the pieces under the Monstrous Feminine. The video features the siren-like singing of the Philippine mythical creature, Manananggal. (To take out). It is a winged vampire that is able to separate its upper and lower part of the body, and is known to target pregnant women as their prey. We gain a new perspective of Philippine culture, far from the religious, demure “Maria Clara” stereotype that was reinforced by colonial influences in literature and art and delve into the grotesque and subversive. As a Filipino woman who was always unsatisfied with the lack of representation, or misrepresentation in the media, it felt almost cathartic to see Philippine independent collectives coming alive in the 21st century to revisit these narratives. Such work in itself provides breeding ground for postcolonial discourse. The artists themselves have taken it to their advantage to coin “Filipino Futurism”, imagining a reality that is free from harmful Western hegemony. To use mythology and folklore as an expression of all things unseen yet believed in, conceptually it reinforces the female Filipino spirit of anger, vengeance, and yearning. Apart from Club Ate’s work, Morehshin Allyahari’s She Who Sees The Unknown: Huma (2016) supports this Southeast Asian narrative of wanting to be heard. The monstrosity of the female body poses a question of the extremities women have to present themselves to be taken seriously. Aren’t our sighs enough to create loud echoes?

In another segment, Crafting New Worlds, Saya Woolfalk’s Cloudscape (2021) are a series of video installations with sound and colour, depicting “enlightened” figures draped in psychedelic colour and imagery. These human-like figures and plants are mapped textured with rendered computer-generated images of water and clouds. One of the pieces, involving a video with a circular frame is a portrait of a woman mapped into these sceneries like a standee. It plays with the concept of self-portraiture, creating a sense of novelty through the play of digital software to map out her face. The hybridity and intersections of identities - race, gender and the digital self propose a future for art that is accepting and spotlighting all the struggles that come with it, capturing the essence of freedom that many women of colour continue to wish for.

In creating a nexus between past mythologies and present mediums of technology, it proves that there is possibility in combining both, instead of resisting modernity in favour of tradition. There is plenty of debate on the debacle of Western depictions of Asian culture, where women of colour are sexualised through a medium as artificial as technology. How is it possible that something inanimate can be used to dominate and ridicule feminine existence? To be able to break away from this, we ought to empower ourselves through pursuing our personal stories and making use of our resources today. For audiences old and young, New Eden is an exhibition worth paying for.