A PLATFORM FOR EMERGING DESIGN TALENT IN SOUTHEAST ASIA
Now in its second edition, EMERGE continues to establish itself as a vital launch pad for emerging and mid-career product designers from across Southeast Asia. Again in the second year, the showcase featured work by 50+ designers from Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, Vietnam, the Philippines, and Indonesia, presenting over 150 original and largely unseen pieces. Spanning 800 square metres within FIND – Design Fair Asia at the Marina Bay Sands Expo and Convention Centre, EMERGE is a key fixture of Singapore Design Week, drawing regional and international attention over three days.
For the 2023 edition, curated under the working title “Craft & Industry: Man & Machine”, the focus shifted toward the spectrum of production methods found across the region—from handmade, craft-based approaches to advanced industrial processes. The curatorial narrative explored how designers navigate, blend, or challenge the boundaries between tradition and technology.
Suzy Annetta once again led the curatorial direction, production, and commercial strategy of the exhibition, working alongside a government-appointed curatorial apprentice. The final cohort of 50+ designers was selected from a comprehensive longlist of more than 500 regional talents.
CURATORIAL MANIFESTO
Craft + Industry: Man + Machine
Lucy Johnston’s book Digital Handmade: Craftsmanship in the New Industrial Revolution eloquently discusses the diminished role of the individual craftsperson in the face of technology-driven mass production during the first Industrial Revolution and contrasts that with the trend driven by more recent developments: where once the human was marginalised, now the availability of digital technologies and tools has created new ways of working that privilege the role of the creative in the process, particularly those who combine the benefits of digitally aided manufacturing with those of master artisans. This collision of the traditional and the technological forms the heart of EMERGE 2023.
The countries in Southeast Asia have long and proud craft traditions, driven by local materials, lifestyle needs and unique cultures. But these craft traditions have been under threat from new modes of production, globalisation, and changing consumption and lifestyle patterns. Indeed, craftspeople have argued that industrialisation threatens to wipe out human knowledge and often emphasise that there are non-economic values in handicrafts, particularly lifestyle and the quality of life.
These trends have played out at a broad scale. The 1970s saw an increased interest in craft, coinciding with the decade’s ‘green wave’ during which many people left cities to live closer to nature.
Traditional crafts that may have withered as their skill base eroded due to the secular social-political-economic factors above began to be rescued, revived and, we might say, reinvigorated by new generations. More recently, concepts such as locally produced and small-scale are seen as intrinsically valuable as well as being linked to ideals of more sustainable economies and ecologies.
Thus, the trajectories of these crafts have been irrevocably altered — they have been not only reproduced, but reconsidered, recontextualised and revalued.
This is what we present in the 2023 edition of EMERGE: a collection of Southeast Asian designers and artists whose work is shaped by a variety of approaches — from a rootedness in ancient craft, to interpretations of the traditional through new materials and techniques, to methods of working that are entirely reliant on contemporary technological innovation.
From fully developed to experimental, each piece is deeply considered, shining a light on the cross-currents between traditional crafts, new technologies, emerging materials, visionary ideas and interdisciplinary methods, as well as the social, cultural and economic value of craft and how it continues to contribute to storytelling and identity; there is a clear spirit of origin, but it comes hand in hand with a universal relevance.
