ArtScience Museum has revealed its slate of highly anticipated exhibitions set to shake up the cultural calendar in 2024. 2024 will be ArtScience Museum’s Year of Extraordinary Women with major shows that examine, celebrate, and uncover the stories of women whose lives have influenced society throughout the decades. The exhibitions range from focusing on inspiring artists and screen legends to strong female characters seen in the epic movies of one of the most beloved animation studios in the world.
The first exhibition to headline this new season is Goddess, a glamorous and powerful exhibition launching in April that highlights iconic women in film and television who have defied expectations, overcome stereotypes, and influenced ideas of femininity through their impact and representation on screen. Curated by ACMI, Australia’s National Museum of Screen Culture, the exhibition is now making its way to Singapore after its successful debut in Melbourne. It will traverse 120 years of moving image history to feature surprising stories, costumes, sketches, interactive experiences, and cinematic treasures from silent cinema to contemporary films of today, with a new focus on Asian screen sirens.
In May, the Museum will present Frida Kahlo: The Life of an Icon, an immersive exhibition about the life and work of iconic Mexican painter Frida Kahlo – one of the most influential women artists of the 20th century who is best known for her uncompromising and vibrant self-portraits dealing with themes such as identity, the human body and death. Marking the 70th anniversary of her passing, this unique biographical multi-sensory experience, developed by Layers of Reality and Frida Kahlo Corporation, will transport visitors inside Frida Kahlo’s most famous artworks to discover how her perseverance, rebellion, and sheer artistic talent placed her far ahead of her time and elevated her to a symbol of female empowerment and resistance.
The World of Studio Ghibli celebrates the iconic films of Japanese animation powerhouse Studio Ghibli. Studio Ghibli has produced some of the best loved animated films of all time. Opening in October, this major immersive exhibition features large-scale, interactive theatrical sets from across the studio’s history, inviting visitors to meet some of their favourite characters as well as traverse the enchanting worlds of iconic films such as My Neighbor Totoro, Princess Mononoke and Spirited Away.
“For years, ArtScience Museum has been trying to bring a Studio Ghibli show to Singapore, and finally, here it is – the big one! Studio Ghibli has created some of the most beloved and critically acclaimed animated films of all time. Their visually sumptuous films explore humanist topics like ecology and nature, and many feature diverse female characters who are strong, independent, complex, sensitively nuanced, and yet relatable. As such, the show – likely to be one of the biggest in our history – perfectly complements our Year of Extraordinary Women. Our exhibitions and programmes this year will explore and celebrate the stories of women who have challenged narratives, defied expectations, and transcended conventions. By bringing focus to the gender revolutionaries of the silver screen in Goddess, and one of the most influential artists of all time in Frida, as well as curating programmes throughout the year that focus on women in art and science, we will make 2024 a landmark year for ArtScience Museum,” said Honor Harger, Vice- President of ArtScience Museum at Marina Bay Sands.
As part of Singapore Art Week, Singapore’s signature visual arts season, ArtScience Museum launched the Year of Extraordinary Women with the film programme focusing on one of China’s leading contemporary artists, Cao Fei. Technotopias: A Cao Fei Multiverse is an exciting retrospective of Cao Fei’s cinematic works running till 28 January at ArtScience Cinema. From the critically acclaimed ‘Asia One’ commissioned by the Guggenheim Museum, to the dystopic miniature dioramas of ‘La Town’ and ‘The Midnight Wanderer’, and finally, her most recent sci-fi epic ‘Nova’, Cao Fei creates worlds that are both poignant and playful. A celebrated international artist who consistently contributes to the ever-changing shape of Asian futurism, Cao Fei’s remarkable twenty-year career includes a series of moving image works that encapsulate the Asian dilemmas between progress and culture in mundane settings punctured by surreal moments.
ArtScience Museum’s Year of Extraordinary Women marks an expansion of the themes explored in the exhibition New Eden: Science Fiction Mythologies Transformed. Running till 3 March, New Eden reveals new perspectives on the traditionally male-dominated sci-fi genre through the lens of 24 women artists and collectives from Asia.
For more details and updates on Goddess, Frida Kahlo: The Life of an Icon, and The World of Studio Ghibli, please visit https://www.marinabaysands.com/museum/year-of-extraordinary-women.html
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