Shubigi Rao is an artist and writer whose fields of study include libraries, archival systems, histories and lies, literature and violence, ecologies, and natural history. Her art, texts, films, and photographs look at current and historical flashpoints as perspectival shifts to examining contemporary crises of displacement, whether of people, languages, cultures, or knowledge bodies. Rao’s works have critically, poetically, and wittily examined the systems of knowledge that structure our world. In 2008, she received her MA in Fine Arts from the LASALLE College of the Arts in Singapore. Since 2014, she has been visiting public and private collections, libraries, and archives globally for her ongoing 10-year project titled Pulp: A Short Biography of the Banished Book. As an artist-in-residence at NTU Centre for Contemporary Art Singapore, she released her first, eponymous book from the project in January 2016. It was shortlisted for the biennial Singapore Literature Prize 2018 (creative nonfiction). The second book, Pulp II: A Visual Bibliography of the Banished Book (2018), won the Singapore Literature Prize (creative nonfiction) in 2020. Both publications have clinched numerous awards including AIGA (New York)’s 50 best books of 2016 and 2018, and D&AD Pencil for design (2016, 2018). The first exhibition of the project, Written in the Margins, won the APB Signature Prize 2018 Jurors’ Choice Award. Rao has also been featured in the 10th Asia-Pacific Triennial (2021), March Meets (2019), 4th Kochi-Muziris Biennale (2018), 10th Taipei Biennial, (2016), 3rd Pune Biennale (2017) and 2nd Singapore Biennale (2008). She is the Curator for Kochi-Muziris Biennale 2022.
Ute Meta Bauer is a curator of exhibitions and presentations that connect contemporary art, film, video, and sound through transdisciplinary formats. Since October 2013 she has been Founding Director of NTU Centre for Contemporary Art Singapore, a research centre of Nanyang Technological University (NTU) where she is a full professor in the School of Art, Design and Media. At the Centre, she has curated and co-curated numerous exhibitions, most recently Non-Aligned (2020), featuring artists John Akomfrah, Naeem Mohaiemen and the Otolith Group, and Trinh T. Minh-ha. Films (2020/2021). From 2012 to 2013, she served as Dean of Fine Art at the Royal College of Art, London. Prior to that, she was Associate Professor at the School of Architecture and Planning, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), where she was Founding Director of the Program in Art, Culture, and Technology (2009–2012) and Director of the MIT Visual Arts Program (2005–2009). In 2015, she co-curated with Paul Ha, Director of MIT List Visual Arts Center, the US Pavilion at the 56th International Art Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia, presenting eminent artist Joan Jonas. Bauer’s current research focus is on the climate crisis and cultural loss. She was an expedition leader of TBA21–Academy’s The Current (2015–2018), which explored the Pacific Archipelago and littorals most impacted by climate change and human interventions, and is the editor of Climates. Habitats. Environments., co-published by NTU Centre for Contemporary Art Singapore and MIT Press (2022). Most recently, she was the Curator for the 17th Istanbul Biennial (2022), together with David Teh and Amar Kanwar.
