magic hour

Design originally by: Benson Chong; Adapted poster design by: Tay Ying

18 January to 26 January 2025, Yale-NUS College Commemorative Art Exhibition
Curated by: Julianne Patricia Thomson, Tay Ying and Christoph Draeger

Curatorial Statement:

Magic

by: Julianne Thomson and Christoph Draeger

In photography, the golden hour is the period of daytime shortly after sunrise or before sunset, during which daylight is redder and softer than when the sun is higher in the sky. These times, when the brightness of the sky matches the brightness of streetlights, signs, car headlights and lit windows is sometimes called the magic hour, especially by cinematographers.

The exhibition "Magic Hour" is a final opportunity for artists connected to Yale-NUS College to communally and publicly exhibit their creative practice. Like the setting sun on campus, the exhibition shines a warm, gentle hue on all the works included, infusing them with a quiet witness-a-moment of timeless appreciation after a long day that has passed. It is a chance to appreciate the beauty it all dissolved into, right before night falls: a metaphor embodied by this varied selection of artworks by Yale-NUS College artists. In the wake of the College’s impending closure, this exhibition is a moment of bittersweet reflection and quiet celebration, like contemplating an extraordinary sunset.

We want our students to learn what is useful and to inquire about what is just, but also to appreciate what is beautiful. *

Magic Hour gathers creative expressions by alumni, present and former professors and students before the College’s closure so that the artistic community all may move on with a coherent legacy to point to in the years to come. This exhibition sparks (and tries answering) the following questions: What does it “look like” to be an artist within the “lineage” of Yale-NUS College? What can this lineage or cannot contribute to the wider philosophy of creative education in the world? When Yale-NUS is all over, what future types of exhibitions, collaborations, or creative endeavors can be possible within this unique artistic community?

While Magic Hour attempts to be a comprehensive archive of all sincere and committed arts practitioners with significant relationships to the college, it was impossible to reach everyone - but we were making an honest attempt.

With the exhibition and this publication, the College offers a last opportunity to share a contemporary moment with the community of visual artists that have been inspired by the Yale-NUS philosophy, and with a wider audience. This effort gestures towards a cannon of unique creative legacy that for some will soon be just a historic afterthought, but that in truth carries further into the future by the many artworks and projects yet to be created by these artists.

*Remarks by Professor Pericles Lewis at the Campus Inauguration, Founding President, Yale-NUS College 12 October 2015. Yale-NUS College, Singapore

Publication Unfold Magic Afterword:

there is hope in magic, and magic in hope

by: Tay Ying

I loved Roald Dahl’s books as a kid. I had always imagined him in a tiny cottage at the end of a canopied pathway, wand in hand, inscribing spells that brewed pathways — timeless bridges — into whimsical worlds. Worlds that whispered an unspoken promise to his readers: to expect the unexpected, to watch with glittering eyes the world around them, and to linger in the in-between of worlds.

A concoction blending the past, present and future in a giant cauldron, Magic Hour resides comfortably in a liminal pocket, where whispers of past lineage infuse with stirrings of new growth. Throughout the interviews conducted with artists and professors within the Yale-NUS lineage, the potion continues swirling in its pot, ever so passionately; a living, breathing archive is brewed. I begin understanding the ways different artists of Yale-NUS once inhabited the spaces I inhabit now. I begin viewing the marks and material traces of these spaces as alive, as reignited. I begin laughing at how absurdly parallel our lives on campus had been, and marvel at the distinct nuances of profundities each cohort had. I find myself reattributing and recomposing moments — those stolen by time and by time left — within the crevices of urgency and immediacy that this exhibition speaks to.

Refusing to remain static, the exhibition evolves with each passing moment. It clings on to the concoctions steeped in the past, and propels it forward into a promising future. As it flashes out recipes of the past, and keeps the fire burning beneath the cauldron, Magic Hour marks a culmination and a genesis. It boldly reminds that the art community and its lineage in Yale-NUS is and will be kept alive with not only every Yale-NUS artist, but every individual involved in this exhibition, and beyond. As a student in the last class of Yale-NUS witnessing a dwindling community and shrinking spaces of belonging, I hold on tightly to this canon that is Magic Hour, that I – we – choose to believe in, as a bridge where echoes of the past murmur comfort to the present, and casts itself readily into the hopeful future.

So, under the enchanting sunset of Magic Hour, we invite you to do the same, to believe. Especially because (in Dahl’s famous words and worlds), “those who don’t believe in magic will never find it”.

Unfold Magic Anthology Launch
Anthology Editor: Yanyun Chen

Exhibition Design Collaterals:

brochure, poster, invitation

Exhibition Installation Views:

Images courtesy of Alan Seah & Julianne Thomson

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