REGISTER FOR THE ZENTAI CONFERENCE @ JCC

Please email the below details with the subject "ZENTAI CONFERENCE ON 23 MAY 2015" to jcc@sn.mofa.go.jp by 21st May 2015.

1. Full Name
2. Gender
3. E-mail Address
4. Mobile Number

Ben Puah is a new breed of contemporary Asian artist who made has a huge impact with his energy and vision. A self-confessed mentally "亂七八糟" artist of ‘crazy artworks’, Ben creates shocking and powerful works that refuse to fit into the mainstream. Art is very important to Ben because it is a way of expressing oneself and an abstraction of how he feel about life.

His works are like in the state of phantasmagoria where there is a mix of real and imagined elements. Ben has exhibited his works in Singapore, Australia, Germany, Japan, USA, Vietnam, Indonesia, Thailand, Brazil, London, Malaysia, Abu Dhabi and China. His artwork is in both public and private collections at numerous local and international locations. Ben has also conducted workshops in many schools and art institutions.

Trained at Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts, Dan Yeo explored human body art in the fields of sculpture, performance art and photography in his early years. In 2007, he began his journey as a professional photographer and founded Nomads' Studio, specialising in pet photography, while continuing his practice as an artist.

He later co-founded White Room Studio, which further exploring his love for the beauty of the human body. It is currently an established photography studio where Dan continues to work.

Liu Wen Chao, born in 1992, is a 3rd year Fine Arts student majoring in oil painting at NAFA. For him, the journey from China to Singapore has been an experience of discovery and wandering. In the two years of his time in Singapore, he has been studying the works of others and doing performance art at the same time.

His recent performances include a collaboration with three other students at Bencoolen Street (2011), a performance on school grounds (2012), and participating with four other artists in the festival 'Future of Imagination 8' (2012). In 2013, he assisted Ben Puah with his exhibition in Iran.

Nigel is a composer, sound and video artist who works with various mediums bearing the weight of unorthodox structure with the blend of electroacoustic aberrant sounds. He explores the basis of music through different styles and history bearing in mind the importance of the process within layers of texture.

Nigel graduated with a diploma in Film, Sound and Video from Singapore’s Ngee Ann Polytechnic in 2009. He is currently in his final year pursuing his Bachelor of Fine Arts in Contemporary Music majoring in Interactive Composition from University of Melbourne’s Victorian College of the Arts. His works include site specific and audiovisual installations that have been shown at galleries including Ian Potter Museum of Art, Instinc Gallery in Singapore.

Born in 1992 and raised in Singapore, Zheng Feng is a freelance artist who strives to create artworks that are not only visual appealing, but also have a good meaning behind it. With an unique eye for details, most of his drawings are filled with lines and wonderful colours. He likes to take part in art competitions and has won several awards. Aspiring to be a multi disciplinary artist, he is always striving to create distinctive visuals. Besides drawing and painting, he likes to take photographs in his free time.

His work, which involves photography and illustration, has been awarded as the top 5 in Levi's 501-photo contest. He hopes to do more photography-related work to build his photography portfolio. His works have also been exhibited in Noise Singapore showcase in 2012.

Lee Wen has been exploring different strategies of time-based and performance art since 1989. His works have been strongly motivated by social investigations, as well as inner psychological directions that uses art to interrogate stereotypical perceptions of culture and society.

He is also a contributing factor in The Artists Village alternative in Singapore and had been participating in Black Market international performance collective. He helped to initiate and co-organise "Future of Imagination" (2003), an international performance art event, "R.I.T.E.S. - Rooted In The Ephemeral Speak" (2009), as well as Pulau Ubin Artist-in-Residency Program (2011). These are vehicles that support and develop alternative art practices, discourse, infrastructure and audiences in Singapore.

Marla Bendini began her amalgamation between art and life in 2007 to explore the multiple liminal identities and fluidity in perspectives. Her multidisciplinary approach towards this amalgamation has become a signature form of hypervisibilty, using the existing politicized body as a catalyst and vehicle for further discourse. She seeks to both engage and disarm audiences and to bridge the present to what she envisions to be an inevitable trans/post-human condition.

She has exhibited and performed in Supermarket 2012, Stockholm Independent Art Fair, sponsored by Riksutställningar/Swedish Exhibition Agency.

Born in Nagasaki, Japan in 1962, Ryosuke Hashiguchi is a director that is best known for his films "The Secret of Last Night" (1989)," A Touch of Fever" (1993), "Like Grains of Sand" (1995) and "Hush!" (2001). In 2013, he directed a film "Zentai" that made its international premier at Vancouver International Film Festival.

He has won the award for Best Director at the 24th Yokohama Film Festival for "Hush!" and at the 33rd Hochi Film Award for "All Around Us" (2008).

Chen Han Fei is currently a year 2 visual arts major (BFA) in Emily Carr University of Art and Design located in Vancouver, Canada. Born and raised in Singapore, he is influenced by politics surrounding the country and by his mother as well.

Majoring in visual arts with a concentration in sculpture, he has made more than 10 contemporary sculptures/installations in his first year at Emily Carr. His works has been exhibited and curated in the 2014 Emily Carr foundation show. Employing the use of lights and shadows in many of his works, he uses medium ranging from photography to film, plaster, wood, ready-mades, mirrors and glass. Also an independent photographer and filmmaker since 2009, he has made more than 5 short films screened at 2 festivals and Singapore’s old school Sinema.

Er Eng Kai is an independent dance and theatre artist currently based in Singapore. In 2013 and 2014, Kai participated in Directors' Lab, a theatre directing mentorship programme organised by The Substation. Prior to that, Kai was involved in various dance-theatre projects in Sweden/Europe where she lived from 2007 to 2012. In Sweden, she initiated "The Family" collective, which created several performances, workshops and experiments, including "House Hole" (2010), a dance-theatre performance, and "Unmaking House Hole" (2011), an improvisation-based workshop and performance series that attempted to un-create the pre-existing performance.

Kai has also created a full-length dance-theatre solo performance, “The Prayer” (2012) that was commissioned by the M1 Singapore Fringe Festival 2012. “The Prayer” was subsequently shortlisted for the Outstanding Performance Award at Prague Fringe Festival 2012.