Asian meets Latin American as Colombian art comes to Singapore and Asian artists plan to head to South America

 Some people fill their suitcases with souvenirs when they go on holiday. Ravi Thakran and his partner Holly Turner came back home from a trip to Colombia with an art gallery.

The duo are the brains behind Singapore-based Artitude Galeria, one of a few galleries in Asia to focus on contemporary Latin American art – in particular Colombian artists including Walter Zuluaga, Andres Layos and street artist Stinkfish.

Turner, who holds a bachelor of arts in ancient history & Egyptology from University College London and enrolled at Sotheby’s Institute of Art to study “Styles in Art”, is the gallery’s curator.

“Bogota is home to amazing and vivid street art on the city’s walls, and I was really drawn to the fearlessness and boldness depicted in Latin American art. It was the cultural riches and vibrancy in Latin American art that stood out, and specifically the cultural scene in Colombia,” she says.

The duo noticed that both Asian and Latin American art vividly reflected the vibrancy of their respective heritages and societies, but the cultures had little exposure to each other, so they decided to start an art gallery to bridge the gap.

“Today, many of the nations in Asia and Latin America which were known to openly discourage street art now embrace it with full gusto,” says Turner.

The cultural and artistic exchange will work both ways. There are plans to take Singapore artists, including street artist Zulkarnaen Othman, better known as ZERO, to paint and exhibit in Colombia later this year. “I’m Asian and Asian art is close to my heart but beyond Asia, it is not appreciated that much and there is little presence of Asian art in South America,” says Thakran. “These two important, vibrant parts of the world should meet.”

For Thakran, the art gallery is a personal project for him to indulge in his love for art. He says, “I’ve always been interested in art, I ended up having a partner who studied the history of art and worked in Sotheby’s. All these things were pure serendipity.”

During their time in Colombia, they felt such an affinity for the country that they decided to purchase a holiday home in Medellin. This city was formerly notorious as drug lord Pablo Escobar’s base but has since been revitalised and is today a popular hub for entrepreneurs. Their Medellin home will have a mural painted by street artist StinkFish – a parallel to their home in Singapore which has a commissioned mural by ZERO.

It is the jet-setting couple’s thing to seek out art on their holidays together. “Our latest favourite was a trip to Machu Picchu in Peru with National Geographic. The incredible history of Incas, who ruled over large swathes of South and Central America, and their awe-inspiring architecture were a real treat for our senses,” says Turner.

And even when Thakran travels for work – he was on the road for 237 days last year – he takes time to seek out the beauty in what others might consider the mundane. He says, “I’ll walk around for about 1½ hours and use my phone to take lots of pictures of what I see.”