Untitled (lost and maybe not always found)
2018 Interactive Installation.
Found wallets, artist receipts, QR code scanning device & headphones set Variable Dimensions
Artist Statement
“I’m sorry” exists as an unusual state of being - at times demanded as a social obligation, other times, a normative dilution, readily disposable. Yet, it takes courage, pride and vulnerability to express a difficult apology. “Is there someone in mind you have always wanted to apologise to?”
As a confessional social experiment, participants who responded to the artist’s public call were asked to record their apology - simulating how they would have done so in reality. With a pact of trust, they then engage in an intimate conversation with the artist to reflect upon their experience.
Quek Jia Qi
Artist Biography
Quek Jia Qi (b. 1996, Singapore), is a socially-engaged artist, who believes in art’s capacity for introspection, connection and community engagement. She works across multiple disciplines, with social practice at its core - deeply intertwined in participation, conversations, critical pedagogy and public practice. Her interventions aim to break social barriers and create opportunities to contemplate on the sensory, emotional and ethical effects of our everyday encounters.
Based in London and Singapore, Jia Qi has exhibited public installations and worked with communities to activate public experiments. In 2017, she led Shifting Concretes, a public workshop series co-hosted with The Substation as part of the 2017 Discipline the City programme, which culminated in a public art social intervention, "Shifting Concretes: Can we 'Lepak' better at Orchard Road?” held at Orchard Road, to reimagine the urban spaces we live in. Expanding on experimental collaborative practices, her recent projects include organising interdisciplinary symposium, Conversations in Singapore History 2018 and And Everything in Between. Jia Qi’s works have also been shown in international venues such as the Institute of Contemporary Arts (Singapore), Capitol Piazza (Singapore), WHITECONCEPTS Gallery (Berlin), Black & White Building (London), and 5th Base Gallery (London). In 2017, she is the winner of the first Social Art Award (2nd Place) for her social interventionist art, and selected international artist to exhibit and attend the award ceremony in Germany by The Institute for Art and Innovation e.V.. The work is also published in the award book: The Social Art Award 2017 – Invigorating the Rise of Social Art, and shared in Conversations in Singapore History 2018 at King’s College London. She is also the illustrator of The Little Things, children’s book about kindness published in collaboration with Wu Jiezhen and Tampines Kindness Movement - available at National Library Board of Singapore.
Currently, the artist pursues Fine Art and History of Art at Goldsmiths, University of London.