Exchange Residency: Erika Tan
Erika Tan’s The Syntactical Impossibility of Approaching with a Pure Heart and Ghost in the Machine were presented as part of A Gift to Those Who Contemplate the Wonders of Cities and the Marvels of Travelling, an artist residency and exchange project initiated by /sLab at the University of Sunderland in partnership with BankART1929 and the Northern Gallery of Contemporary Art. The project formed part of the British Council-accredited UK-Japan 2008 programme, marking the 150th anniversary of the Anglo-Japanese Treaty of Amity and Commerce.
The Syntactical Impossibility of Approaching with a Pure Heart centres on Mount Fuji, bringing together video, drawings, digital images, animation and sculptural elements. By contrasting repeated representations of Fuji with live footage in which the mountain is obscured by fog, Tan highlights the gap between expectation and experience, questioning whether it is possible to encounter a place without the perceptions that precede us.
Ghost in the Machine extends this investigation into how images and objects acquire meaning as they move between different contexts. Together, the works question the stability of representation and draw attention to what remains unfamiliar beneath seemingly familiar cultural images.
Erika Tan (b. 1967, Singapore) is a London-based Singaporean artist and curator whose research-led practice spans film, video, photography, installation, archival research and participatory projects. Her work explores cultural memory, migration, representation, and the movement of people, objects and ideas across borders, often responding to specific cultural, geographical and historical contexts.
Recent projects include *Ancestral (r)Evocations at Tate Modern (2025) and Threads of Kinship at KADIST, Paris (2025–26). In 2026, her work was presented at He Art Museum, Foshan, and in Afterlives: The Weaver, A Chorus, An Archipelago. Her work has also been exhibited at the Venice Biennale, Tate, National Gallery Singapore, Taipei Fine Arts Museum, ZKM and the Singapore Biennale.
Year: 2008/9
Artists: Erika Tan and Mio Shirai
Exhibition: A Gift to Those Who Contemplate the Wonders of Cities and the Marvels of Travelling
Collective heading: Made in Japan
Works: The Syntactical Impossibility of Approaching with a Pure Heart; Ghost in the Machine
Curated and produced by: Keith Whittle and Alistair Robinson
First venue: Northern Gallery of Contemporary Art
Subsequent venue: BankART 1929, NYK, Yokohama
Partners: BankART 1929; P3 Art and Environment; The Graduate School of Film and New Media, Tokyo National University of Fine Arts and Music
Format: Film, video, photography and installation
Support: The Daiwa Anglo-Japanese Foundation; The Japan Foundation; The Great Britain Sasakawa Foundation