Artist Talk, Sing A Bird

Venue: INSTINC Space, 39 Keppel Rd, #03-10 Tanjong Pagar Distripark, Singapore 089065

Opening Reception: 17 September 2025 (Wed.) 5:30PM–8:30PM

Exhibition Duration: 18 to 21 September 2025 (Wed-Fri, 1PM-7PM. Sat - Sun, 1PM-6PM)

Artist Talk: 20 September 2025 (Sat.) 3:00PM-4:00PM

Join us for the artist talk by French-Colombian artist Carolle Sanchez, our second Artist-in-Residence under VISIONS: A Singapore–France Emerging Artist Residency Programme.

Conceived as a symbolic and conceptual journey, Sing a Bird continues a research process initiated in France with Correspondances polyphoniques, exploring the figure of the bird as both subject and author. Developed during a residency in Singapore, the exhibition engages with the local territory, its biodiversity, its legal frameworks, and its history — including the tradition of bird-singing contests — to reflect on how birds, and more broadly non-human beings, have been subject to systems of classification, representation, and ownership.

The journey begins with a photograph of a work by Sébastien Gschwind: a nest fitted with a megaphone, inviting us to listen to the birds and carry their voices further. From there, the path leads into the installation, where all voices share the same horizon. Lou Villapadierna's piece is heard as one bird among many, listened to through headphones in the intimacy of a one-to-one encounter with an author.

The exhibition unfolds as a gradual passage: from the immobilisation of the bird in art history, scientific illustrations, and laws, to gestures of symbolic liberation through fading, erasure, and withdrawal. These acts do not destroy, but release — loosening the bird from the frames and the cages that once held it, and reimagining history and traditions not as a site of preservation, but of flight.

Sing a Bird is an invocation — a quiet reversal that lets the bird's voice rise, not as background or metaphor, but as art. As if the city itself could be reimagined from its edges, from its trees and silences, from a bird's song heard just before its flight. Not just the name of a city, but the continuous song of a city.

About Artists

Carolle Sanchez

Carolle Sanchez is a French-Colombian artist and researcher whose conceptual practice probes regimes of appropriation, authorship, and collective memory through acts of erasure, withdrawal, and dissemination. Operating at the junction of law, art, and writing, she builds frameworks that expose the fictions governing both legal and aesthetic terrains. Working with archives, anonymity, and polyphonic voices, her installations—textual, visual and sound pieces— stage tensions between presence and absence. Recent presentations of her work include the gallery Zoo Centre d'Art Contemporain (Nantes, France), la Ferme du Buisson (Noisiel, France), le 6b (Saint Ouen, France), la Galerie Michel Journiac (Paris, France).

About INSTINC Space

Founded in 2004 by artist Yeo Shih Yun, INSTINC is a leading artist-run institution based in Singapore. With a distinguished presence in the arts ecosystem, INSTINC diligently sustains the growth of contemporary art through exhibitions, residency programs and curations. Their esteemed Artist-in-Residence program has cultivated invaluable regional and international networks since 2009. INSTINC is celebrated for producing immersive, large-scale exhibitions that encompass installation, new media, performance, painting and sculpture, showcasing the diverse range of artistic expressions.

Notable collaborations include partnerships with renowned brands such as Volvo and Guinness, further demonstrating INSTINC's commitment to fostering cross-disciplinary exchanges. Moreover, INSTINC takes immense pride in organising the highly anticipated INSTINC D:Art Festival 2022, generously supported by UOB Bank and the NAC start fund.

INSTINC continues to foster creative individuals and collective practitioners by establishing a platform for cross-disciplinary exchanges with their relocation in Tanjong Pagar Distripark. With expertise in exhibition curation, commissioned works and brand alliances, INSTINC endeavours as a vital presence in the cultivation of contemporary art.