SINGAPORE.- Be treated to a spectacular visual art experience as Singapore-based, British fine artist Chloë Manasseh explores her Sephardic roots in her solo exhibition, CASA. The exhibition reflects on how one’s concept of home and identity shifts over time. CASA delves into Jewish folklore, featuring wall paintings, two-sided folding screens, a tile installation, and pots that will transport the viewer to an alternate Morocco-born from the artist’s vivid imagination. Folklore tales, much like memory or landscapes, are imprecise and subject to change. Manasseh is interested in the imprecision of memory and the process by which imagination can intrude on physical space, influencing how people establish a connection to it, reflecting on how we inhabit space through visual identity.

Chloë Manasseh is a British Israeli artist, with familial roots in Morocco, Iraq, Portugal, Britain, Israel, India, and Singapore, etc. Her paternal family is of Jewish Baghdadi origin and was originally settled between Calcutta (India) and Singapore, contributing to the establishment of a Jewish community here in Singapore. The artist’s mother was born in Casablanca (Morocco), living there for a short while before her family, like many others, journeyed to Israel via Marseille. Having already established a career in Europe with notable projects and residencies across the continent as well as in the US, Manasseh’s journey of self-discovery has continued in this latest exhibition in Singapore.

The works in CASA evoke differing experiences of being indoors and outdoors, exploring memories of absence, the value of tradition, and the search upwards for the divine. Perhaps, the connecting factor is not only the roots created on the ground but the unconscious collective desire of the Jewish people to be re-connected and together once more; to look up instead of down.

The curation of the works creates a path for the viewer, where they will be confronted with domestic space. Inspired by Manasseh’s Moroccan heritage, strong vibrant colours and heavily patterned botanical surfaces, alongside the natural landscape, evoke a search for the others. Vertiginous works force the imaginative gaze of the viewer upwards, looking through an expanse of trees, exploring perceptions of identity and rootedness within a given landscape.

CASA runs until 2 May 2021. View exhibition catalogue