NOT FOR SALE

Venue: Digital Billboards at Fortune Center and Kinex Mall
Date: 14 – 23 January 2022
Curators: Kristine Tan and Gillian Daniel
Artists: Debbie Ding, Chong Yan Chuah and Yeyoon Avis Ann
Photography: Arabelle Zhuang

As part of Singapore Art Week 2022, NOT FOR SALE was an artwork commission that invited three artists – Debbie Ding, Chong Yan Chuah and Yeyoon Avis Ann – to create speculative video works that surveyed the effects of our entrenchment within a state of surveillance capitalism catalysed by digital technology. These site-specific works were screened on a five-storey digital billboard outside Fortune Centre and a new billboard at Kinex Mall. In the way they both mould and mirror a society’s desires and ideals, anxieties and fears, advertisements can be revealing cultural artefacts. The works of the three artists in tapped into this potential to consider the reverberating impact of digital technology on our capitalist society. NOT FOR SALE also included an audience participation element by inviting viewers to leave their responses to the project's prompts. Selected responses were highlighted on the billboards during the exhibition run.

An unconventional site of display, the ten day presentation leveraged off the foot and motor traffic of the 2 sites which was projected to be 597k in total. The accompanying website housed detailed write-ups about the artworks and interviews with the artists. Furthermore public agencies, artists and curators have been in consultation with the curators for future projects including the upcoming Singapore Night Festival and next Singapore Art Week.