Kara Inez

Kara Inez (b.1991) is a Malaysian artist based in Singapore who draws from her personal experiences to touch on issues surrounding the female body and mental health through mediums such as performance art and sculpture. She is known for the use of abject materials and silicone to create life-like grotesque bodily forms. Her works evoke the feeling of disgust in her audience as a means to challenge the social constructs set in place surrounding these suppressed topics.

She graduated from Lasalle College of the Arts with a First Class Honours Degree in Fine Arts in 2019. Being the recipient of The Winston Oh Travel Award (2019), she ventured to Tirupati in South India to carry out research on the hair trade. Her works have been exhibited at the Institute of Contemporary Arts Singapore, S.E.A. Focus (Singapore), Art Expo Malaysia, Gajah Gallery (Singapore), nATTA Gallery (Bangkok), and White Box (Kuala Lumpur).

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We’ve reached this point

Third Series + 28 Jun 2019 42 Cambridge Road

The piece features the artist holding a pair of scissors alarmingly close to her eye, almost touching her pupil. The artist battles with the strain on her lifted arm as she struggles to maintain the position of the scissors without harming herself. This strenuous piece conveys the heavy burden of anxiety, one of the many crippling symptoms of endometriosis, a severely painful condition effecting 1 in 10 Malaysian women. Many women in Malaysia remain undiagnosed due to their inability to reach out about their condition due to the taboos and shame surrounding the topic of menstruation. If left untreated, this condition can lead to infertility. The piece mirrors the artist’s hidden struggle to take control over this aspect of her condition that for years has taken so much from her while evoking the feeling of anxiety in the audience.

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The Weight of Distance

Seventh Series +

25 April 2020

Online

The artist balances the weight of a 1 meter wooden stick between her body and a wall in her home, refusing to let it fall before its time despite the struggle. The performance examines the artist’s relationship with distance during the current lockdown period.

In 'The Weight of Distance', the artist gives distance a form and interacts with it. In this case, distance takes the form of a 1 meter wooden stick. 1 meter is the minimum distance allowed between people during Singapore’s Circuit Breaker.

Different versions of the performance were carried out over the course of 5 hours. This was the last performance.