Still Life – Suzann Victor

In Still Life, Suzann Victor presents the audience with a space infused with the drama of the ordinary by introducing the unpredictability of the organic and ephemeral into a hitherto sterile environment. Often ascribed as Victor’s first foray into installation work in 1992, Still Life is also credited for breaking ground in ideas of site-specificity, imperceptible movement (a prelude to her kinetic series), and the transformative reconfigurability of artworks whilst on display.

Artist Statement

Still Life originally occurred as a proliferation of raw eggplants that appeared to grow out of the dark slate walls of 5th Passage [now protruding from the institutional walls of the National Gallery of Singapore] each angled as an invasive protrusion, but in concert, as vertical planes of projectiles aimed viscerally at the audience - repelling proximity yet intrusive of the space usually demarcated for it, in a mutual dissolution of boundaries between seeing and presenting.

Selected for its distinct plethora of curvatures and smooth shiny exterior in a palette of bright purple hues reminiscent of the painterliness of oils, each eggplant was composed into position by means of a straightened paper clip inserted into the gaps between slate tiles, spreading laterally, invading perpendicularly.

Although seemingly humorous upon first encounter, initial impressions quickly give way to a threatening aura. The eggplants, with their characteristic phallic form establishes the place of presentation – and prompting the recognition of other social spaces for that matter – as patriarchal space: hostile. In recognising the gendering of spaces as such, the eventual putrefaction of the eggplants seemingly alludes to their eventual decay and nongenerative capacities.