Roundtable: Meet the 2025 Artlab Editorial Fellows

Artlab Editors: Logging in from New York, London, Dubai, and Singapore, 2025 Artlab Editorial Fellows Jiaying Sim and Elvia Wilk recently convened with Advisors Rahel Aima and Orit Gat for the first time in a virtual roundtable discussion.

To kick off the 2025 Artlab Editorial Fellowship, Fellows Jiaying Sim and Elvia Wilk discussed their upcoming work with Fellowship Advisors, Rahel Aima and Orit Gat, who will be providing 1:1 mentorship to Sim and Wilk respectively throughout the year. Facilitated by Artlab Editor, Shannon Lee, the conversation delved into the hidden infrastructures undergirding contemporary art production, the literal and metaphoric role of scripts, and what it means to talk about the weather—all the while echoing this year’s fellowship theme, connecting across boundaries.

Jiaying dialed in from Singapore, where the night was humid and cloudy. From Dubai, Rahel reported a bright and sunny evening. In London, Orit was experiencing a classically grey but not rainy and not cold (but also not quite warm enough) afternoon. And in New York, Elvia and Shannon’s morning was warm and very humid, with a looming threat of rain.

Shannon Lee: It’s so wonderful to see all of your faces in one virtual meeting room! Rahel, thank you for prompting us to describe our local weather conditions—quite potent given all our geographies.

Elvia and Jiaying, I wanted to touch on something that I felt was such a strong throughline connecting your Fellowship proposals. Jiaying, you articulated this as an exploration of “the hidden infrastructures in contemporary art practices,” which is a great way to put it.

For Elvia, this will manifest in a deep dive into the role of scripts in contemporary art. Meanwhile, Jiaying will be unpacking different methods of engagement—labor, materiality, multisensory experiences—and how those are employed by artists in Singapore. In these specific ways, each of you plan on peeling back the curtain and revealing the unseen, hidden elements that undergird artmaking practices. 

What drew each of you to examining these hidden infrastructures? Why are these infrastructures critical to examine and reveal?

Jiaying Sim: I’ve always been quite interested in the lens of visuality, as someone who has been studying cinema for most of my professional career. I’ve been thinking a lot about the limits of representation, whether these happen by choice, by circumstance, or by conditioning. 

We tend to think a lot more about what’s represented and what is visible in the final product versus considering hidden elements and structural conditions like labor. This has led me to think about the ways in which artists manage such constraints and how they impact the modes of engagement that are produced. I’m looking to explore the power dynamics that sometimes get pushed into the background in place of aesthetics—the artists and projects I’m looking at are really good at thinking through these slippery categories of identity and politics.

I hope to capture these ideas through writing that’s emotionally responsive and also respects the process. All of these ideas came together through the prompt of the Artlab Editorial Fellowship. It gave me an opportunity to articulate these ideas that were often only related to film; I’m really thankful for the opportunity to engage with these questions.

Elvia Wilk: I think this is a really nice connection between our work. I’ve been starting to think about scriptwriting in a pretty literal sense: What does it mean to write something that then is transformed into a work that is always exceeded by the script underpinning it? The script is always disrupted in the making of something—and the work exceeds the plan.

I like thinking about the scripts underpinning all of the work we do in artistic production and how that work is always circumscribed by labor conditions, by modes of display, and modes of circulation. When it comes to making change, we always need to rewrite or begin again. The works and artists I’m looking at are interested in this kind of circularity, this feedback loop of writing and making. And another crossover within the fellowship context is that Jiaying and I are both looking deeply at moving image work. 

Shannon Lee: I’m very looking forward to seeing how each of you unpacks the intricacies of these kinds of expanded cinemas within contemporary art. Rahel and Orit, I’d also love to hear your thoughts on this subject of unveiling what is not made explicit, as I feel like this is something each of you are deeply engaged in through your writing practices.

Orit Gat: During the Advisor’s Roundtable discussion, Rahel and I talked about an interest in a form of writing that is experimental and emphasizes an attention to the text itself. In the context of this desire to highlight art writing that attempts to do something more than just be in the space of the work and instead add more language, context, and background to it—Rahel articulated this as “writing about the air around things”—the idea of cinema and moving image as projecting images and sound through air is particularly beautiful.

Rahel Aima: In thinking about this idea of scripts and hidden infrastructures, I’m thinking a lot about the business of art and the optics of impartiality that we discussed in Orit and I’s prior conversation. These are conversations I’ve been having a lot, especially with people in the Gulf—this constant navigation and contending with an outside audience that isn’t from here. This is something you see more of in smaller or more globally marginalized art scenes.

I’m also thinking a lot about something Elvia wrote for Frieze years ago about the impossibility of separating an artist from their art and their context.

Elvia Wilk: I’ve been thinking about that piece again too. I think my argument there, in the context of this conversation, is that you can’t separate anyone from the labor conditions. If we’re looking at an artist or an artwork within the context of their labor conditions, the conversation shifts entirely. It’s more difficult to make a conceptual separation when you are examining the materialist considerations of how things are actually made. You have to think about the economic underpinnings of what we do. I was also advocating for a kind of contextualization and transparency for how we frame what we do as writers.

Shannon Lee: Rahel, in that conversation, you had also mentioned the material conditions that impact writing from a place that is considered outside of the usual global art capitals which I think is very resonant with Jiaying’s proposal. Jiaying, given that your essays will focus on contemporary artists in Singapore, I’d love to know whether you feel the methods you plan on exploring are particular to this place.

Jiaying Sim: To be fair, I often don’t think of myself as really within the art world, as I come from film. In a way, this kind of outsider perspective hopefully allows me to have more of an interdisciplinary positionality. That disclaimer aside, I do think that labor conditions are especially important within Singapore and Southeast Asia.

The question of visibility has been something I’ve been thinking a lot about, especially in relation to Singapore’s art context. What does it mean to be an artist in Singapore when you have to defend the fact that producing work matters? Art isn’t a luxury, it’s knowledge-making, it’s public engagement. Having to navigate through this landscape I think leads to very experimental and creative ways of moving through these constraints.

Shannon Lee: Elvia, I wanted to circle back on your proposal which focuses on scripts. This is a pretty big thematic departure from what you’re typically known to write about. I’d love to know how you see this fellowship within the greater context of your art writing practice.

Elvia Wilk: This editorial project feels like a synthesis of many things I’ve been working on for a long time. Writing the proposal felt so surprisingly natural! I don’t know if I’ve ever written a proposal that made so much sense to me from the start. I was like, “Oh, this is actually a joy to write because I didn’t realize I was already thinking about exactly this.”

The question of story is kind of eternal. A novel is a very different kind of story than a work of art—I’m intrigued by that tension. For a novelist, there is a one-way or maybe a two-way relationship between writer and reader. The author is able to control and dictate the script. An artwork on the other hand has a totally different relationship to an audience and can (and often does) abandon the script when it needs to.

The artists who spurred this line of inquiry are the ones who begin with a narrative. Then, through the collaborative process, that narrative comes into collision with the world. The story changes. Seeing artists work in this way has been really appealing to me as a writer. I always want to explode my own working process.

I’m thrilled to see editorial collaborations come more and more to the fore in conversations around art writing as of late. It’s also such an incredible privilege and joy to get to work with Orit who is so versatile and really knows everything.

Shannon Lee: Something that I’ve picked up on through this conversation is this idea of  porousness in artistic practice—that cultural production doesn’t happen in a vacuum of pure ideas or execution. There are always unexpected inflows. With this in mind, I wanted to ask each of you about how you are thinking about this year’s fellowship theme, “connecting across boundaries.” 

Rahel Aima: I’m very curious to see what parallels do or don’t exist between Dubai and Singapore given that our scene here is much younger. Dubai in its early years was very much built on the model of Singapore as a city built out from a free port. 

I’m also curious to see how the dynamics of the state and soft power that exist in the Gulf region resonate in Singapore and how those infrastructural and economic factors diffuse in artistic production and how art gets written about.

Jiaying Sim: I’ve been thinking a lot about this question of state funded art, especially in relation to cinema. In Singapore, films often make it in the international circuit before they are recognized at home. There’s this sense that you can only make it in Singapore if you have accolades elsewhere. Even with state funding, there are often limitations on the kind of work that can be made or what can be said, affecting the authenticity of the works that are produced.

Rahel and I will have a lot to talk about in observing the way artists in our respective regions demonstrate care through their work—and how that care is performed. I’m really interested in the boundaries that we can blur and cross.

Rahel Aima: One thing I’m particularly interested in personally is not re-erecting International Art English in our pursuit of boundary blurring. I’m very interested in writing that is of its place. What would it mean to have this conversation in a different dialect or language? For example, when Arabic speakers get edited in English, there are often many more definite articles where there ordinarily wouldn’t be, naturally, in English. I’m interested in writing that retains this. It’s not really a re-erecting of boundaries, but an acknowledgment of the contours of a place, just as the work reflects the place it’s made in.

Orit Gat: I think more than half of us in this chat are speaking in a language that isn’t our first. Jennifer Allen once gave a talk Jennifer Allen once gave a talk where she said that the second we decided we’re going to speak about contemporary art, we decided that we’re going to speak about it in English.

I’m interested in a sense of community. Publishing makes communities because we bring people together in a quite literal sense. How do you resist that sheen of globalism and keep the specificities of our positions, reflecting them while also making something that is communicative and builds communities?

I’m interested in a sense of community. Publishing makes communities because we bring people together in a quite literal sense. How do you resist that sheen of globalism and keep the specificities of our positions, reflecting them while also making something that is communicative and builds communities?

Rahel Aima: I’m curious about how everyone thinks about audience or who they’re writing for.

Elvia Wilk: It’s very much in my mind. I saw somebody’s post recently on Substack that said, “Content is writing, minus editing.” Content has an audience that is vague and implies a consumer on the other end. Hopefully when writing I can think less about who’s consuming it and more about who’s reading it. The best thing in the world is to get an email from somebody who I don’t know and is either curious about something I’ve written or even hated it.

Many of the artists I’m interested in writing about are also dealing with multiple languages and the issue of untranslatability. How can we mobilize the tools of language in different ways? Subtitling is a political gesture. What you leave untranslated versus translated implies types of audiences—possibly ones that don’t always get written about in the contemporary art world. I think a lot about opacity and what you choose not to write about as much as what you choose to write about.

Jiaying Sim: In Singapore, we are given an English education and my mother tongue is Mandarin. It wasn’t until later in life that I realized how, over the course of my education, I became separated from that language. I realized how precious that connection was and how it was put aside in favor of a kind of global accessibility and mobility. Of course, my current professional and personal life has still benefited from this bilingualism.

I think through this experience, I’ve always thought of myself as a translator. I’m trying to translate what’s on screen through language; my lifelong pursuit has been to try and capture an affect or emotion in ways that are still open. I’m also a teacher and so I think my audience is always looking to bring people in.

Rahel Aima: Journalists like to say they’re writing the first draft of history. I don’t know how I feel about that, but I think as critics, very often you are writing the first draft or at least the primary materials for art history. I’m curious about how people think about time. I’ve seen how things I’ve written about over ten years ago get incorporated or extracted from histories. This has made me more careful about what I write, especially if my writing might be the only documentation of something happening beyond a press piece. I’m curious about everyone’s thoughts on this kind of accountability.

Elvia Wilk: I think we’re accountable for a lot of things, firstly the work we choose to write about. We’re accountable to respecting the work’s intentions, asking who it was made to be seen by, and understanding the conditions under which it was shown. Jiaying has been speaking a lot about this idea of articulating constraints which I think is so important right now.

Jiaying Sim: These are so many questions I’ve been thinking about and it’s really nice to hear them articulated in such beautiful ways. When it comes to accountability, I think there are many different layers. I’m not a historian by training so the work I write about has to be meaningful to me.

We also don’t necessarily get access to a lot of work so the circulation of art in my region often lies within writing. I think I’m accountable to my experience with the work and bear responsibility for this act of translation and sharing.

Shannon Lee: I’d love to know how each of you are thinking about how this fellowship might impact your respective practices and where you might be headed next, particularly within the context of the advisorship.

Orit Gat: The experience of reviewing applications for the fellowship was so humbling and astonishing. I really enjoyed reading so many of them.

I’m so honored to get to work with Elvia, a writer who I’ve never edited or worked with but whose writing I may possibly have read all of. It is an astonishing opportunity. All I can give is my attention and I will give a lot of it! But I suspect I will be getting quite a lot from this experience.

Elvia Wilk: I’ll take the attention! I’ve been thinking about attention so much recently—the capture of our attention, the exploitation of it, the commodification of it, and how it’s such a scarce resource. Even talking about it in this way suggests that it’s a resource to be mined.

But it’s the greatest thing we can give each other when so much around us is demanding it. I took a big break from art writing over the last year because my attention was totally shot. I like to speak candidly about this because I didn’t think I was always able to give my subjects the attention they deserve, so it was important to step back and evaluate my priorities. Editors are also frankly overworked! All the editors I know are working really valiantly against the deficit of attention.

I’m so looking forward to being in conversation with someone like Orit. I can’t imagine someone who thinks more deeply about the role of writer and is also continually refinding creativity and joy in this difficult terrain.

Jiaying Sim: I can’t stress enough how shocked I was to have been selected as a fellow—especially alongside Elvia! As a cultural theorist, I think the topics Rahel has written about are things that I’ve always been interested in but I found too difficult and too unwieldy to even consider writing about.

I’m really keen on learning how Rahel maintains her critical eye while contextualizing that with so much sensitivity and empathy. I generally hide behind the work when I’m writing and I hope to learn a little bit from Rahel on how to write with conviction. It’s so precious to have a community of people who spend time with your work and can call out my blind spots and pick on things when I didn’t notice them. These are things that I value and that I give to my students.

Rahel Aima: As I’ve mentioned before, I’m really looking forward to finding the connections between Dubai and Singapore. I think a lot about terroir—what does it mean to live in a place with this kind of soil or in a humid place versus a dry one? It has such a big impact on the way artists produce work but also the way things are written about.

We were talking earlier about the atmosphere around the work. What if art writing is a capture of a time and a place?

Elvia Wilk: One of my favorite pieces of art writing in the last year or two were Orit’s radio transmissions, which were these amazing podcasts. They made me think a lot about what it means to hear the writer’s voice in your ear and how moving it can be to hear someone reporting live from a location or acknowledging where they are. I just found that so exciting and refreshing. There was also this aspect of experiencing someone’s thoughts in real time that was so exciting as a different form of documentation. It felt so intimate.

Orit Gat: Yesterday at the class I teach at the RCA, we were discussing religion and one student started talking about how reading together and reading aloud played a huge role in the religion she was raised in.  We were discussing this as a methodology of art writing but I also now wonder if it’s a methodology of collaborating around text. It might be useful for how we’re thinking about the ways we all work together.

Elvia Wilk: My reviews almost always start as voice notes to friends about what I love! You’ll probably get some of those.

Orit Gat: I would love that!