With Singapore facing its deepest economic recession, there is a growing sense amongst the people of this island republic that their government cannot always be expected to provide all the answers to their shared problems, that oftentimes, the answers lie within themselves. This also means a loosening of state strictures that have hitherto dominated social political debate within the republic. This loosening has also been hastened by the space that the internet allows.

The Air Conditioned Recession – A Singapore Survey, will attempt to address some of the underlying issues that remain under the surface by mining existing works by Singaporean artists created in the past few years.

The Air Conditioned Recession is a partner programme of SINGAPORE ART SHOW 09.

Organised by Valentine Willie Fine Art, Singapore, and taking place in Artspace@Helutrans in Singapore’s Tanjong Pagar Distripark, The Air-Conditioned Recession was a group exhibition of 15 Singaporean artists whose works attempted to address the tensions brewing beneath the surface of the pristine island nation. Borrowing its title from a book by sociologist Cherian George, who described Singapore as a climate-controlled city-state of obsessively micromanaged environments, the exhibition’s dates coincided with the country’s National Day on August 9.

The works in the show poked and prodded at the symbols of Singaporean national pride—the Merlion, the National Service, the food (a topic of long-standing sibling rivalry with Malaysia), the conceits of being a successful multiracial country and a Westernised nation with Asian values—in order to reveal whether they could hold up under pressure.