You, Other; I, Another
Relation is reciprocity. My You acts on me as I act on it. […] Inscrutably involved, we live in the currents of universal reciprocity.*
The exhibition features nine artists and runs until 22nd July 2018 at The Private Museum, 51 Waterloo Street, #02-06, Singapore 187969 ___________________________________________________
Dr Susie Lingham writes:
To and from every I there is a You, a They, a We, an Us, an Other. To whom is another, Other? Or is it more precise to say: when is the other Other to another? Otherness is an oscillation; is in oscillation. The binary-dynamic of finding the self in the other has always been tipped at moments, and shifts to finding the other in the self – recognizing difference within oneself is ongoing, and unnerving, for every ‘I’.
Within the structures of any society, how is the other conditioned into being ‘Other’? How is otherness represented? Who represents otherness? In what way do we feel ‘other’, and how do we feel for and with ‘the other’ who differs from our self-sensed otherness?
The Other demarcates the line of belonging; what we identify against. The Other fascinates; confounds; is feared and rejected; is reviled; is ignored, dismissed; is mistreated, marginalized, alienated; is tolerated. Then again, some specimens of otherness are denied even ‘existence’ because quite anomalous, and uncategorizable: perhaps the Other is a Hydra, not a community.
Otherness differentiates on a spectrum of ‘difference’ – in kind, by degree, by decree, by choice, inevitably. In You, Other; I, Another, nine artists’ works diverge off various individual realities of lived Otherness, or concepts of difference – expressed in diverse materialities and modes. From the rhythms of the natural world to the measures of culture and custom, and stemming from the personal, the familial to societal – all manner of Other manifest here reciprocally, “inscrutably involved.”
catalog ______________________________________________________ * Martin Buber, I and Thou, trans. Walter Kaufmann (New York: Touchstone, 1996).
