Echo: Inside out

Echo: Inside out is a cross-disciplinary and cultural exchange programme developed by the Central Academy of Fine Arts (CAFA) in Beijing and LASALLE College of the Arts. The exhibition features works made collaboratively by students and graduates from BA and MA programmes at CAFA and LASALLE who were selected by lecturers from each institution. Spanning various media, the works in the exhibition combine the varied interests and approaches of the students and graduates.

Each work was first developed during a two-week workshop at LASALLE, where participants from CAFA were able to experience the arts scene and culture in Singapore. Following the workshop, the students and graduates continued to develop their works through conversations online via Skype and
telephone. These conversations culminated in a presentation of the works at the School of Design at CAFA in April this year.

Many of the works in the exhibition explore difficulties in communicating between cultures and different geographical locations, expressed by their titles and juxtapositions of visual references from China and Singapore. These difficulties are also highlighted in the exhibition’s theme, which refers to philosopher and cultural critic Walter Benjamin’s concept of translation as an echo that creates a distance from its original reference.

Participants and institutions: Liu Bao (CAFA) and Martha Chaudhry (LASALLE), Liu Chunye (CAFA) and Hong Huazheng (LASALLE), Bao Yawen (CAFA) and Giada Tagliamonte (LASALLE), Guan Ying (CAFA) and Justin Lee (LASALLE), Wu Yiting (CAFA) and Dominic Tong (LASALLE), and Qiu Yu (CAFA) and Jade Yeo