Irish artist Jesse Jones’s Tremble Tremble is an interdisciplinary exhibition that employs installation, film, sound and performance to re-imagine feminist history. But in this iteration at LASALLE’s Institute of Contemporary Arts Singapore, which is the exhibition’s first showcase outside of the 57th Venice Biennale, the theme of legacy is even more pronounced.
This was because Jesse was an artist-in-residence at LASALLE and during her time here, she explored the archives of Brother Joseph McNally, LASALLE’s founder and a fellow Irish. She told The Straits Times in an interview that, “I was thinking of what an artist leaves behind so other artists can come forward.”
Beyond incorporating his hand tools into the exhibition, Jesse also brought in her own personal experience with the local Hungry Ghost Festival by way of a steel burning table.
Through Tremble Tremble’s spell, Jesse hopes for “the viewer [to] feel that he is in a real space with other people and that requires a responsibility. Our presence is not a given. It is something we have to work towards.”
This comment by Jesse alludes to the impetus of Tremble Tremble for the artist wanted to emphasise how women’s rights have evolved since the 1970s, and that such female struggle against the patriarchy should continue for the betterment of the generations of women to come.
