The Tourist Gaze | A Study of Postcards with Goh Sze Ying

Name: The Tourist Gaze | A Study of Postcards with Goh Sze Ying
Start: 2025-03-02T15:00:00+08:00
End: 2025-03-02T17:00:00+08:00
Location: 1 St. Andrew’s Road, Singapore, Singapore 178957

Schedule

Sun Mar 02 2025 at 03:00 pm to 05:00 pm

UTC+08:00

Location

1 St. Andrew’s Road, Singapore, Singapore 178957 | Singapore, SG

The Tourist Gaze | A Study of Postcards with Goh Sze Ying
Sun 2 Mar | 3pm | Supreme Court Wing, Level 3, UOB Southeast Asia Gallery 3 | Free, registration required:https://bit.ly/TheTouristGaze
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Can postcards really show what a place is truly like, or do they always reflect the tourist’s point of view?
While postcards may be less popular in today’s digital age, they have long been a way for travellers to share their experiences with loved ones. Yet when you look closely, these seemingly idyllic landscapes and cultural landmarks are often obscure and distant from their reality.
In 1990, sociologist John Urry introduced the concept of the “tourist gaze”. This concept examines the contrast between the everyday surroundings seen by a local and the object of the "tourist gaze", seen by a traveller, now reduced to an object of leisure and spectacle.
Join curator Goh Sze Ying in this exploration of how the tourist gaze is constructed, reinforced, and circulated over time and across different spaces, using your own postcards as a point of exploration. The 2-hour session will begin with a tour of the UOB Southeast Asia Gallery 3, followed by a discussion with Sze Ying, before we come together to share personal stories connected to our own postcards.
**Note: Please bring your own postcards to participate in the sharing portion of this programme.
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About the speaker
Goh Sze Ying is Curator at National Gallery Singapore, where she contributes to the UOB Southeast Asia Gallery long-term exhibition, "Between Declarations and Dreams: Art of Southeast Asia since the 19th century". More recently, she worked on exhibitions including "Living Pictures: Photography in Southeast Asia" (2022), "Ever Present: First Peoples Art of Australia" (2022), "Something New Must Turn Up" (2020), "Minimalism: Space. Light. Object." (2018) and "Lim Cheng Hoe: Painting Singapore" (2018). In 2019, she co-curated the sixth edition of the Singapore Biennale, "Every Step in the Right Direction".
Image credits: D.A. Ahuja Studio. "Entrance, Shwe Dagon Pagoda-Rangoon". 1912. Postcard, lithograph on paper, 8.9 x 13.8 cm. Collection of National Gallery Singapore Library & Archive.