Suzann Victor

Suzann Victor (born 1959) is a Singaporean contemporary artist based in Australia whose practice spans installation, painting, and performance art. Victor is most known for her public artworks and installations that examine ideas of disembodiment, the postcolonial, and the environmental in response to space, context and architecture.

Victor was the co-founder and artistic director of the significant Singaporean artist-run initiative and space, 5th Passage (1991-1994). She was one of four artists selected to exhibit at Singapore's first national pavilion at the 49th Venice Biennale in 2001, alongside Henri Chen KeZhan, Salleh Japar, and Matthew Ngui. She was the only woman artist to have represented at the Singapore Pavilion for the art biennale in Venice until 2022, with Shubigi Rao to represent Singapore then.

She has exhibited widely on the international circuit, participating in exhibitions such as the 6th Havana Biennale in Cuba, The 2nd Asia-Pacific Triennial (APT2) in Australia, the 6th Gwangju Biennale in South Korea, the 5th Seoul International Media Art Biennale in South Korea, ZKM's Thermocline of Art 2007 in Germany, and OÖ Kulturquartier's Hohenrausch 2014 in Austria.

Education and personal life Born the youngest of more than 10 children, Victor was adopted by the second wife of her biological aunt's husband. 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, 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.