ArtScience Museum’s New Eden: Science Fiction Mythologies Transformed will open a portal to extraordinary new worlds beginning Oct 21 until Mar 3, 2024.
Drawing inspiration from Asia’s rich culture and history, the contemporary art exhibition offers a significant new perspective on the science fiction genre.
New Eden: Science Fiction Mythologies Transformed spotlights 24 Asian women artists and collectives, including Mariko Mori, Cao Fei, Patty Chang, Sputniko!, Lee Bul, Shilpa Gupta, and Anicka Yi, who demonstrate how their work addresses science fiction, dream worlds, and fantastical reality.
The exhibition makes connections between Asia and the West while acknowledging that science fiction concepts such as parallel universes, interdimensional travel, and transcendence are also deeply rooted in Asian philosophy and spirituality.
Visitors will learn about the science fiction genre from new perspectives, including Asian mythologies and philosophies, such as hybridity, mysticism, strange lifeforms, multiple futures, and a longing for a paradise beyond our own. The close to 70 artworks, artefacts, and Hollywood and Asian films also illustrate Western sci-fi paradigms, including parallel worlds and interstellar travel.
New Eden is divided into eight chapters: Paradox of Paradise, Words and Worlds, New Nature, Ways of Folding Space, Crafting New Worlds, The Monstrous Feminine, New Myths, and In a New Light.
A slate of programmes will be held during the opening weekend, allowing visitors to explore science fiction worlds and engage with Asian women artists. As part of the exhibition’s opening symposium titled Radical Imaginations – New Eden on Oct 21,, artists Sputniko!, Irene Agrivina, Debbie Ding, and other speakers will explore speculative futures and new worlds informed by Asian mythologies.
Until Mar 2024, ArtScience Cinema will present a curated film programme called In Search of Tomorrow. From Oct 16, it will feature a line-up of kitsch B-movies, cult classics, and contemporary arthouse films that illustrate utopian and dystopian visions of the future.
Among the highlights are Memoria starring Tilda Swinton by Thai film director Apichatpong Weerasethakul, Creature by Akram Khan, an acclaimed dance film, Solaris by Andrei Tarkovsky, and Astro Boy, an iconic cartoon android.
Tickets to New Eden: Science Fiction Mythologies Transformed are available at all Marina Bay Sands box offices and online. You are advised to pre-purchase tickets online in advance due to limited capacity and timed entry of the exhibition.
