[10] Blue Fire by Jason Wee

“An artist and curator as well as a poet, Wee manipulates literary form in ways that are visually as well as structurally satisfying.”

“Jason Wee’s An Epic of Durable Departures” by Lindsay Shen, Cha Journal Blog

Artist and writer Jason Wee’s Blue Fire was recently showcased in the ‘it’s the end of the world, let’s dance’ 2025 exhibition at Ames Yavuz Gallery in Gilman Barracks, Singapore. Curated by Jason Wee, the work is built around ideas of frissons and pleasures that we enjoy on our own or within our circles of kin, lovers and friends.

Using Wee’s hallmark shades of prussian blue, it draws its words from a section of his latest poetry collection, From A (Undesirable) Diary:

‘What
will I burn with?
Not rage, that’s what my
self-arsonist
wants me to think but grief
the kind that kicks
the kidneys into
the stomach’.

Known for his “poetry of solidarity and of deep listening” (Singapore Literature Prize finalist citation, 2020), Wee’s collection was lauded as Book of the Year (2024) by Singapore Unbound.

Biography:
Jason Wee (b. 1979, Singapore) is an artist and a writer working between contemporary art, architecture, poetry and photography. His art practice contends with sources of singular authority in favour of polyphony and difference. He transforms these histories and spaces into various visual and written materials, and is keenly interested in their secrets and their futures, their idealisms and their conundrums.

Wee is the founder and director of Grey Projects, an artists’ space and library in Tiong Bahru. Grey Projects is an art library for publication, curatorial and exchange activities. Through Grey Projects, he explores organising as an artistic principle, producing Singapore’s first island-wide open studio self-guided art tour, ‘Walk Walk Don’t Run’. He also co-founded Proud Spaces, a queer community and cultural space in Redhill.

His art is recently seen in the Changwon Sculpture Biennale (2024), Kochi-Muziris Biennale, India (2022-2023), Other Futures Festival Amsterdam (2023) and past exhibitions include: the 6th Singapore Biennale (2022), Para Site, Hong Kong (2021), the Chelsea Art Museum, the 1st Asia Society Triennial, Asia Society Museum, New York, USA (2020), ArtScience Museum, Singapore (2019), Institut für Auslandsbeziehungen, Berlin, Germany (2015, 2009), Casino Luxembourg, Luxembourg (2009), Singapore Art Museum, Singapore (2015) and amongst others.

In 2023, he was awarded the Asymmetry PhD Scholarship for the Advanced Practices programme, in collaboration with the Department of Visual Cultures at Goldsmiths, University of London.

He is the author of four poetry collections, including ‘An Epic of Durable Departures’, Singapore Literature Prize 2020 finalist, and the Gaudy Boy Poetry Prize finalist ‘In Short, Future Now’.

Specifications:
– Year: 2025
– Medium: Watercolour, pencil and ink on paper
– Dimensions: 82.4 x 60.5 cm (Framed)