Suzann Victor

Born the youngest of more than 10 children, Victor was adopted by the second wife of her biological aunt's husband. Her adoptive mother was a housewife and her adoptive father, who had five other children, ran a transport business. Victor knew little about her biological father, though she was aware that he painted movie banners, and her biological mother was a housewife. In the 1970s, after completing her GCE 'O' Levels at Fairfield Methodist Girls' School, Victor searched for a job and enrolled in a secretarial course, though she did not get the opportunity to apply her skills. At the age of 19, she became a housewife, marrying her now ex-husband. 7 years later at the age of 26, she enrolled at LASALLE College of the Arts while still married. In 1990, Victor graduated with an Associate Diploma of Fine Art (Painting) from LASALLE College of the Arts. She would leave Singapore in the mid-1990s to study in Australia, obtaining her Bachelor of Fine Arts in 1997, her Master of Fine Arts in 2000, and be awarded her Doctor of Philosophy in 2008, all from the University of Western Sydney (now known as Western Sydney University). == Career ==

Early career In 1988, Victor and her LASALLE College of the Arts classmates took over a stretch of Orchard Road with their abstract prints and paintings, holding a small exhibition by displaying their work on the ground. also organising public readings and forums. In particular, it focussed on issues of gender and identity, and on the work of women artists. Later in 1994, 5th Passage received a ten-month offer to curate shows at vacant shop units in the Pacific Plaza shopping centre, which the initiative took up. Victor's works from this series, such as His Mother is a Theatre and Expense of Spirit in a Waste of Shame were acquired by the Singapore Art Museum as soon as it was shown, becoming significant works within Singapore's history of contemporary art. In 1998, Victor performed Still Waters (between estrangement and reconciliation) at the Singapore Art Museum for exhibition and residency project, ARX5: Processes. described by Victor as a work responding to the de facto performance art ban and the loss of the 5th Passage space. In 2001, Victor was selected as one of four artists to exhibit at Singapore's first national pavilion at the 49th Venice Biennale, the first and only woman artist to have represented at the Singapore Pavilion for the art biennale in Venice until 2022, when Shubigi Rao was selected to represent Singapore. Present-day In 2013, for the 4th Singapore Biennale, Victor exhibited Rainbow Circle: Capturing a Natural Phenomenon, which induced rainbows within the interior of the National Museum of Singapore. In 2019, the M1 Singapore Fringe Festival selected "Still Waters" as its theme, a direct reference to the 1998 performance work at the Singapore Art Museum by Victor. == Art ==

Victor's installations are often theatrical in nature, and of a scale that allows the viewer to 'enter' the work, such as in her 1994 works His Mother is a Theatre and Expense of Spirit in a Waste of Shame. Issues of gender, marginalisation, and abjection are significant themes explored—in her 1998 performance work, Still Waters (between estrangement and reconciliation), Victor performed within the drains of the Singapore Art Museum, the role of which Victor explores in her doctorate thesis, Abjection: Weapon of the Weak, writing:Such drains were a relic of the building's colonial architecture, made purposeless by retrofitted glass walls that turned a once-exposed balcony on the second-floor into a sealed, controlled air-conditioned space for artworks. The position of the artist's body within this liminal space, half-submerged in drain water, spoke to the role of performance art with its de facto ban in Singapore; the spectre of coloniality upon the postcolonial body; as well as the marginalised presence of women artists in the male-dominated art landscape of the time. == Awards and collections ==

In 1988, Victor was awarded the Australian Bicentennial "Highly Commended Award" from the National Museum of Singapore. Later in 1989, she received the IBM Merit Prize from Singapore's Ministry of Communications and Information. In 1995, Victor was awarded the Singapore International Foundation Art Award. Her work can be found in the collections of the Singapore Art Museum, the Australian High Commission in Singapore, the University of Western Sydney in Australia, the Singapore Armed Forces Reservist Association, the Ministry of Information and the Arts in Singapore, the Takahasi Corporation in Japan and Ernst & Young, among others. == References ==