STAR Residencies (Science, Technology, Art & Research)

NTU Centre for Contemporary Art Singapore is pleased to announce the launch of STAR Residencies (Science, Technology, Art & Research), a new residency programme aimed at fostering the cross-pollination between artistic and scientific research. Through partnerships with select NTU research institutes, STAR Residencies embeds artistic residencies at the core of the University, creating a unique opportunity for exchange between artists and academic researchers. A pioneering programme in the context of Singapore and Southeast Asia, STAR Residencies stems from NTU CCA Singapore’s decade-long expertise in developing innovative platforms for knowledge making, creative experimentation, and transdisciplinary collaborations.  

For its inaugural cycle, STAR Residencies unfolds in partnership with NTU Earth Observatory of Singapore (EOS), a research institute of Nanyang Technological University dedicated to the scientific observation of the forces that shape our changing planet. Regarded as a leader on a broad spectrum of geosciences in the Asia-Pacific region, EOS gathers critical data and develops vital knowledge about geohazards, climate change, and their impact on human societies. This collaboration expands Centre’s long-standing research on Climates.Habitats.Environments. and its continued commitment to critical artistic practices that engage with ecological complexities, climate change, and sustainability to advance the collective awareness of planetary interconnectedness in times of environmental distress.

The artists participating in the first iteration STAR Residencies are: Ng Hui Hsien, The Observatory (Dharma, Cheryl Ong, Yuen Chee Wai), and Zarina Muhammad. They were selected from a pool of 19 candidates (nominated by experts in the field) by a Selection Committee composed of: Dr Karin Oen, Director, NTU CCA Singapore, Senior Lecturer and Head of Department, Art History, NTU School of Humanities; Lauriane Chardot, Assistant Director, Community Engagement, Earth Observatory of Singapore, NTU; and Haeju Kim, Senior Curator and Head of Residencies, Singapore Art Museum. 

The first cycle of STAR Residencies takes place from April 2025 to March 2026. Within the programme’s framework, artists are granted unprecedented access to processes and methodologies of fundamental scientific research, state-of-the-art laboratories, data sets, and extensive international networks, being provided with the exceptional opportunity to immerse themselves in EOS’s dynamic scientific community wherein they can expand their intellectual horizon, explore ideas, forge new means of artistic inquiry, and engage creatively with Earth systems and ecological complexities. The programme will conclude with an exhibition in March 2026 that will showcase the research projects developed during the residency. In the words of Karin Oen, “STAR Residencies mark an important new chapter for NTU CCA Singapore in which the intersections of artistic and scientific research can thrive with the support of the broader academic community at NTU.” 

With creative practices that span photography, performance, installation, and sound, the artists will conduct independent research on a variety of Earth systems, interweaving different bodies of knowledge in aesthetic outcomes that foster the awareness of ecological interconnectedness and of the complexity of human relation to nature. Drawing on her background in ethnography, Ng Hui Hsien intends to complement the scientific strategies used to evaluate environmental changes and geohazards with indigenous ecological knowledge shaped by lived experience, oral traditions, and direct observation, creating evocative insights into practices of ecological coexistence. The Observatory will expand their engagement with subterranean phenomena and geological formations. Deepening their understanding of the volcanic arcs that shape Southeast Asia and of the processes of rock formation, they will develop a project that resonates from deep time to contemporary existence. Driven by a process-led and constellatory approach to collaboration, Zarina Muhammad will engage with different scientists to expand epistemic frameworks for ecological witnessing, looking at weather formations, underwater ecologies, polycosmologies and the interdependency of environmental knowledge systems. 

STAR Residencies is developed and curated by Dr Anna Lovecchio, Curator, NTU CCA Singapore.