Shubigi Rao

It would also be included in '50 Greatest Works of SingLit', a list of the greatest books of Singaporean literature from the 19th century to the present day.

Shubigi Rao (born 1975) is an Indian-born Singaporean contemporary artist and writer known for her long-term, multidisciplinary projects and installation works that often use books, etchings, drawings, video, and archives.

Her interests include archaeology, libraries, neuroscience, histories and lies, literature and violence, and natural history.

Rao has exhibited internationally, presenting work at the 59th Venice Biennale in 2022, 10th AsiaPacific Triennial in 2021, 10th Taipei Biennial in 2016, the 3rd Pune Biennale in 2017, the 2nd Singapore Biennale in 2008, as well as the 4th Kochi-Muziris Biennale in 2018.

Rao was born in 1975 in Mumbai, and is currently based in Singapore.

In 1996, Rao obtained her Bachelor of Arts (Honours) in English Literature from the University of Delhi.

From 2003 to 2013, Rao assumed the role of a fictitious male scientist named S. Raoul and presented his work at scientific conferences and group art exhibitions.

As part of her projects from 2003 to 2013, Rao assumed the identity of S. Raoul, a fictional archaeologist, scientist, and theorist, whose interests spanned immortal jellyfish to the risks of brain damage posed by contemporary art.

Rao's interests were expressed through the persona of Raoul, which included archaeological studies of contemporary Singapore in works such as The Study of Leftovers, Pseudoscience in Suitcase, and Earth=Unearth.

She would later obtain her Diploma in Fine Arts, Bachelor of Fine Arts (First Class) and Master of Fine Arts (First Class) from LASALLE College of the Arts, Singapore in 2005, 2006, and 2008 respectively.

She previously lectured part-time in Art Theory and was a MFA Dissertation supervisor for the Faculty of Fine Arts at LASALLE College of the Arts.

Originally commissioned for the 2008 Singapore Biennale, The Tuning Fork of the Mind involves a tongue-in-cheek brain scan conducted through a series of steps that revealed the supposedly damaging effects of exposure to contemporary art upon one's brain.

Rao "killed him off" in a 2013 solo show at the Institute of Contemporary Arts Singapore, The Retrospectacle of S. Raoul, which memorialised him after he supposedly tripped over an installation by Rao and died.

The exhibition assembled some of Rao's works from the past 10 years that was based around the figure of Raoul.

The exhibition was accompanied by the publication, History's Malcontents: The Life And Times of S. Raoul, which served both as a guide to the character of Raoul, and to a selection of Rao’s works beyond the show itself.

In 2014, Rao initiated her currently ongoing 10-year project on the destruction of books and libraries, ''Pulp: A Short Biography of the Banished Book.

In 2016, as an artist-in-residence at the NTU Centre for Contemporary Art Singapore, Rao self-published the first book from her project, also titled Pulp: A Short Biography of the Banished Book''.

From June 2016 to May 2017, as an international artist-in-residence at Künstlerhaus Bethanien, Berlin, Rao would develop the first instalment of the Pulp project, Written in the Margins (2014–2016).

In 2018, Rao received the Juror's Choice Award at the APB Foundation Signature Art Prize for her work, Written in the Margins (2014–2016), the first instalment of her ongoing 10-year project on the destruction of books and libraries, titled Pulp: A Short Biography of the Banished Book.

The first volume from the Pulp project was also shortlisted for the Singapore Literature Prize in 2018.

The book was later nominated for the 2018 Singapore Literature Prize.

In 2018, she would receive the Juror's Choice Award at the APB Foundation Signature Art Prize for Written in the Margins.

In August 2018 at Objectifs, Singapore, Rao would hold the solo exhibition, The Wood for the Trees, which functioned as a "visual bibliography" of the various texts, individuals, and sites Rao had encountered in the duration of her ongoing Pulp project.

Here, she would launch the second volume of her project, titled Pulp II: A Visual Bibliography of the Banished Book.

During the fourth edition of the Kochi-Muziris Biennale from December 2018 to March 2019, Rao was Singapore's sole representative, presenting a video installation that constructed a fictive history of book smugglers in the Indian port city.

Alongside Kochi-Muziris Biennale founder and artist Bose Krishnamachari, Rao was featured on the 2019 and 2020 editions of the ArtReview Power 100 list, which charts the most influential individuals working in contemporary art.

In 2022, Rao represented Singapore at the 59th Venice Biennale with the project Pulp III: A Short Biography of The Banished Book, with Ute Meta Bauer as curator for the artistic team.

In February 2019, Rao exhibited alongside American actress and artist Lucy Liu in a joint exhibition at the National Museum of Singapore, Unhomed Belongings.

In May 2019, it was announced that Rao would curate the fifth edition of the Kochi-Muziris Biennale.

Alongside Kochi-Muziris Biennale founder and artist Bose Krishnamachari, Rao was featured on the 2019 edition of the ArtReview Power 100 list, which charts the most influential individuals working in contemporary art.

Titled "In our Veins Flow Ink and Fire," its first announced artist list involved 25 participating artists and collectives.

In August 2020 Rao won the Singapore Literature Prize in Creative Nonfiction for her book, Pulp II: A Visual Bibliography of the Banished Book.

Rao will curate the fifth edition of South Asia's biggest visual arts event, the Kochi-Muziris Biennale, which was initially planned to take place from December 2020 to April 2021, before being postponed to 2022 due to COVID-19.

She would be featured alongside Krishnamachari on the ArtReview Power 100 list once again in 2020.

In August 2020 Rao won the Singapore Literature Prize in Creative Nonfiction for her second volume from the Pulp project, Pulp II: A Visual Bibliography of the Banished Book.

The judging panel, comprising Clarissa Oon, Eddie Tay and Sarah Churchwell, commented: “Probing, exhaustive in its global scope, intellectually ambitious and deeply felt, the second volume in artist-writer Shubigi Rao’s decade-long documentary project on reading, libraries and censorship gets to the heart of what ‘creative non-fiction’ can be.

As a book on the value of books, rendered through incisive prose and visual imagery, it provokes the whole question of what a book is, in terms of form.

In terms of content, it is replete with insight and wisdom, constantly shifting our expectations of the subject matter and in the process, able to stand with the best in world literature."

Rao represented Singapore with 'Pulp III' at the Singapore Pavilion for the 59th Venice Biennale in 2022, with Ute Meta Bauer serving as curator for the artistic team.

Her work was listed as one of the best national pavilions by Artsy, The Arts Newspaper, and Weltkunst among others, and garnered significant media and public attention.