Performance Artist Singapore: Contemporary Art with Shamsa Smiha Kapoor

Today, we are proud to be featuring a performance artist Singapore – Shamsa Smiha Kapoor, or Shamsa for short. She will be sharing more about her art style as well as her journey as an artist. The following excerpt are all in her own words.

Society Owes an Apology to Ecology - Highlighting the Horrors of the Covid-19 Pandemic, Instigated by an Imbalance in the Ecosystem Created by Human Action, Singapore Performance Artist Shamsa Smiha Kapoor
Society Owes an Apology to Ecology – Highlighting the Horrors of the Covid-19 Pandemic, Instigated by an Imbalance in the Ecosystem Created by Human Action

Much of my personal artistic practice was nurtured under my mentor, Kanchan Chander during my final years of high school. She was highly established in the Indian art scene. It was under her that I learnt and fell in love with conceptual iterations that underlies any mature creative processes.

I finally had the tools to develop personal, philosophical, cultural and historic narratives that were personal to me and elaborate them in my creative process. To pursue this further I enrolled myself in LASALLE.

I can’t I’m going to Mongolia, Comma Space, Singapore (2020) - By Artist Shamsa Smiha Kapoor, In Collaboration with Parth Dhokalia
I can’t I’m going to Mongolia, Comma Space, Singapore (2020), In Collaboration with Parth Dhokalia

Singapore has been a very important mile-stone in shaping my creative practice. It opened up the world of contemporary art to me where I automatically started leaning further towards conceptual thinking and challenged the jaded notions of what could be. (to be a performance artist in Singapore)

Understanding the history and all the new developments in art and art thinking opened up my interest to performance art.

Perhaps, it was the years spent as a child decorating and performing on school stages, coupled with my immense love for deep conceptual thinking that could find a beautiful entanglement in contemporary performance art in the fine art context.

A Selfing Euphony II, By Singapore Performance Artist Shamsa Smiha Kapoor The LASALLE Show Exhibition, ICAS Gallery, 2021
A Selfing Euphony II (2021), The LASALLE Show Exhibition, ICAS Gallery

I, the artist, in flesh and blood, am the artwork. The actions I perform in real time, the traces it leaves, and the reactions it derives from the audience, together form the artwork. This was at the peak of my creativity.

Performance art actively shifts our perception of art to focus more on the creative process behind art-making. To an extent, this involves a rejection of the skill based approaches to art which focus a huge amount of attention on the final outcome and undervalue the process behind art-making.

Becoming Weather: A Performative Excursion Into the Tropical by Singapore Performance Artist Shamsa Smiha Kapoor, In Collaboration with Jimmy Ong
Becoming Weather: A Performative Excursion Into the Tropical, In Collaboration with Jimmy Ong

Performance art demands ‘presence’ on the part of the artist and the audience both. In many cases, performance workshops are constructed in a way that every participant who joins becomes an artist in their own right to contribute to the collective experience of the artwork.

With such a focus on presence, performance art can be understood to be a more organic process driven creative strategy which demands a full body experience.

A Selfing Euphony I (2021), Singapore Performance Artist Shamsa Smiha Kapoor
A Selfing Euphony II (2021), Artist Shamsa Smiha Kapoor

In my practice, I wish to nurture these qualities of performance art that urge us to slow down and increase our awareness, to connect and become one with each other and the environment in which it is performed.

These qualities bring about a therapeutic-healing effect on the people who engage with this process. This can provide a creative key to mindfulness using art making so we can all learn to be more centred in ourselves and develop empathetic connections with the people and our surroundings.

A Selfing Euphony I (2021) ,  Sculptural Installation to Symbolise Self-reflection
A Selfing Euphony I (2021) , Sculptural Installation to Symbolise Self-reflection

I wish to work with groups of people to join me in forming such experiences together.
By performing with each other, we can collectively connect with the space around us, with nature, with the processes of drawing and painting, or anything else that we decide to work with on within the structure of such art workshops.

I wish to challenge ourselves to be more open to these new creative processes.

A Selfing Euphony I (2021), Sculptures Representing the Body in Visceral, Formations Through an Organic Yet Mechanical Flow, By Singapore Performance Artist Shamsa Smiha Kapoor
A Selfing Euphony I (2021), Sculptures Representing the Body in Visceral, Formations Through an Organic Yet Mechanical Flow, Artist Shamsa

My time in Singapore has also surprised me with all the new technological innovations of our time. The new media in development that has taken over our lives is another area I wish to actively engage with.

It’s here, I can explore my existing interest in the idea of creative collaborations to take on new meanings. These technologies have immense potential to connect and communicate. It’s quick and expansive.
I wish to understand the reach of such technologies and challenge its existing boundaries by infusing them with creative conceptual ideas.

Society Owes an Apology to Ecology - Video Installation by  Artist Shamsa Smiha Kapoor.
Society Owes an Apology to Ecology – Video Installation by Artist Shamsa

I want to challenge myself to use these technologies to present new ways of experiencing art. My time in LASALLE has been specifically useful here as it has challenged me to develop my conceptual thinking in a way that it can respond to all such evolving innovations of our time.

Breaking Egg (2021), Artist Shamsa Smiha Kapoor, in Collaboration with Te Hao Boon  @ the Corridors, Pearl Hill Terrace
Breaking Egg (2021) in Collaboration with Te Hao Boon @ the Corridors, Pearl Hill Terrace

I feel that it’s a very exciting time to be alive, especially in Singapore which is championing creative innovations in the corporate sector. It is now the responsibility of the artists to harness them for creative purposes.

I wholeheartedly believe that creative collaborations where we can bring our skills and strengths together to make use of the innovations of our time is essential to march our way into the future.
If artists can find creative strategies to collaborate with the rich corporate sector that builds Singapore, we can image a future together with dynamic creative innovations.

A Selfing Euphony I (2021), The Motif of the Window, Artist Shamsa Smiha Kapoor
A Selfing Euphony I (2021), The Motif of the Window, Artist Shamsa

There’s no other field I’d rather be in than the arts, for I see the potential of creative evolution to shape and nurture the future worlds clearly laid out in front of my eyes.

If you like to know more about performance artist (Singapore) Shamsa, do follow us on our socials to learn more! In the meantime, do check out our list of artists as well!

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