See Like a Heretic: On Vision and Belief

Gajah Gallery Singapore proudly presents See Like a Heretic: On Vision and Belief, a solo exhibition by acclaimed international artist, Suzann Victor. Based in Australia since the late 1990s, Victor’s art continues to be a regular feature of the contemporary art scene in Singapore, collected and exhibited by Singapore’s major cultural institutions and significant to Singapore’s contemporary art history.

Spanning almost a two-year collaboration with the Yogya Art Lab (YAL) in Indonesia, a residency initiative organised by Gajah Gallery, the exhibition See Like a Heretic continues Victor’s ongoing experiments with the qualities of light and her inquiries into how we perceive, experience and make sense of our being in the world. The materiality of stained glass is prevalent throughout the works in this exhibition; the YAL team and the artist worked in tandem to produce a series of Christian religious icons, angels, wings-without-angels, and intricate heart sculptures.

While the stained-glass medium is reminiscent of the translucent coloured light that gently filters through church windows, in See Like a Heretic precious stained glass is violently crushed and meticulously reworked into opaque shimmering coverings and exquisite sculptural forms. Approached with delicacy and precision, the YAL team has managed to successfully translate Victor’s vision into an extraordinary body of work that exudes an iconic status and divine sensibility of a different kind.

If the heretical worldview evinces commitment to another way of seeing and being in the world beyond accepted beliefs, then See Like a Heretic call us to this particular action and positionality: to view, envision and believe from a perspective at odds with and outside of prevailing orthodoxy, conventions and traditions. See Like a Heretic is an invitation to see Victor’s art and the beliefs that sustain us, in yet another light.