Activation of the Well V: Loving Water, A Round Table Discussion (ZOOM)

Thursday, June 24, 2021, 5:00 - 6:30PM HST

Panelists: Ruobing Wang, Serina Rahman, ISEAS-Yusof Ishak Institute, Representative Jeanne Kapela 

Host: Mina Elison

Moderator: James Jack

Zoom Registration Required HERE

Description: An essential component of life and living, water needs to be cared for and protected. Join panelists for a conversation exploring knowledge of and connections with water. What are some of the ways we can deepen our relationships with water and mālama this precious source?

James Jack is an American Asian artist who works at the mouth of the Pandan River where freshwater meets the sea in Western Singapore. Engaging layered histories of place to achieve positive change through community-led initiatives woven together with raising sensitivity to ecological networks, his works have been exhibited at Honolulu Museum of Art, Centre for Contemporary Art Singapore, Setouchi International Art Festival, Busan Biennale, and the Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Art. James Jack is a graduate of University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa and currently teaches at Yale-NUS College.

Serina Rahman was once a mermaid, now serving life as a human amongst fishermen in southwest Johor, Malaysia. Her day job is as a Visiting Fellow at the ISEAS-Yusof Ishak Institute in Singapore, but her practice is in community engagement and empowerment for coastal habitat protection. Using citizen science and marine environmental education, she has spent the last 13 years living in Mukim Tanjung Kupang, Johor, Malaysia where she tries to help local youth understand, appreciate and earn an income through the sustainable use and showcase of their natural and cultural heritage. With her husband, the founder of Kelab Alami, the NGO through which this work is done, she runs a seafood market (Pasar Pendekar Laut – Sea Warriors Market) that enables the local fishermen to earn twice what they used to – but also encourages them to release endangered species and report on special finds at sea. Serina lives on and by water, and can only survive with regular (now daily) doses of the ocean – albeit only from a muddy strait that connects Singapore and Malaysia.
 
Wang Ruobing is an artist, independent curator and academic based in Singapore. She received her Doctor of Philosophy from the University of Oxford, United Kingdom. She was previously a curator at the National Gallery Singapore. At present, she works as a lecturer at LASALLE College of the Arts and is the co-founder of Comma Space 逗号空间: an artist-run experimental art space that creates thinking spaces between commas. Wang’s artistic work spans across a variety of methods and approaches, including drawing, film, photography, sculpture and installation. Concerned with challenging and exploring different ways of seeing everyday objects and urban landscapes in relation to the rapidly changing world of today, Wang creates artworks that actively disrupt perception and spotlight on the anthropological nature of objects. Living on an island, she is particularly interested in the ecosystem related to marine issues. Her recent solo exhibition “Off Shore On Tide” (2021) deals with marine debris that travels around the world on ocean currents.  As an independent curator, her recent curated exhibitions include "Artist as Collector" (2021), “12 SOLO” (2020 -2021); “Arts in Your Neighbourhood” (Public Art Trust 2018 and 2019); “Happens When Nothing Happens” (The Esplanade, 2019); “Of Other Places” (The Substation, 2019); and “Beneath Tide, Running Forest” (Singapore Botanic Gardens, 2018). As an academic, her research concentrates on identity, hybridity and transcultural discourses, particularly on contemporary art in China and Southeast Asia. Her writings have appeared in publications such as Journal of Contemporary Chinese Art (JCCA), Yishu: Journal of Contemporary Chinese Art, Nanyang Art and a range of exhibition catalogues.

This program is offered as a part of the exhibition a guide to loving water, a collaborative project of James Jack and the Donkey Mill Art Center that asks the question: what happens when we listen to water? In this experiential exhibition, the Gallery is a participatory space for sharing methods of love for the water and land which we depend upon. Together, with the Donkey Mill Art Center, artist James Jack invites the community of Kona and beyond to engage with water, and listen to the stories and wisdom which water shares with us today. This open-ended exploration of water weaves language, creative process and indigenous knowledge to form the basis for an exhibition presenting a collection of listening to water as interdependent parts of documenting imaginative ways of connecting. 

This exhibition and programs are made possible by the Laila Twigg-Smith Art Fund of the Hawai’i Community Foundation and County of Hawaiʻi Contingency Funds from Holeka Goro Inaba (North Kona, District 8).