Discover how everyday actions transform into meaningful gestures amidst adversity.
“My art is doing time, so it’s not different from doing life or doing art or doing time. No matter whether I stay in ‘art-time’ or ‘life-time,’ I am passing time.”—the artist Tehching Hsieh thus describes his durational performances, which turn the banality of life and the passage of time into medium and subject for his art.
Building on Hsieh’s philosophy, the exhibition Everyday Practices examines the inventive ways artists have appropriated quotidian routines and lived experiences to express powerful statements of resilience and endurance. Through their works, we witness ongoing conflicts, humanitarian crises and asymmetrical power relationships. In this context, the gestures that the artists have employed, by dint of repetition, reveal themselves as small acts of resistance that return agency to the individual. Art, as we see here, offers a means of sense-making and coping in the face of adversity.
Drawing from the collection of Singapore Art Museum, Everyday Practices brings together artworks by diverse artists across different generations and geographies in Asia. They affirm that the collective strength found in individual actions cuts across cultural practices and conditions. The question that is universal to us all is: “In the face of life’s challenges, how do we go on going on?”.
Image credits: Dusadee Huntrakul, Surfing the monsoon waves with the fish, 2015
about the artists
Tehching Hsieh
Tehching Hsieh (b. 1950, Taiwan) is a pioneering figure in performance art known for his endurance-based works. After dropping out of high school in 1967, Hsieh initially pursued painting but soon transitioned to performance art. In 1973, he performed Jump Piece, in which he broke both of his ankles. In 1974, he entered the United States where he lived as an undocumented immigrant for fourteen years until gaining amnesty in 1988. Hsieh is renowned for his five One Year Performances and a Thirteen-Year Plan, works that blurred the boundaries between art and life, often involving extreme physical and mental endurance. His pieces have been exhibited globally, including at the Museum of Modern Art and the Guggenheim. In 2013, the M+ Museum in Hong Kong acquired a comprehensive collection of his works, and he represented Taiwan at the 2017 Venice Biennale.
Maria Taniguchi
Maria Taniguchi (b. 1981, Dumaguete City, Philippines; lives and works in Manila, Philippines) works in painting, sculpture, video, and installation, encompassing a practice that investigates space and time along with social and historical contexts. Taniguchi is most recognized for her brick paintings, a series that began in 2008 and has served as the fundamental root of her larger practice. Every artwork is composed of an array of seemingly infinite rectangular cells, meticulously outlined by hand with graphite and filled with shades of gray and black. With many paintings reaching meters in size, their structured form echoes architectural elements, transforming the works into monumental entities that command attention with their space.
Min Thein Sung
Min Thein Sung (b. 1978, Myanmar) creates works that draw on daily life in Myanmar, addressing complex histories of a country that was long isolated from the world. Often playful and poetic, his works conjure up patterns of creativity and modes of imagination that circulate under restrictive political regimes. His works are often inspired by memories of his childhood and a desire to find respite in the present moment.
Htein Lin
The practice of Burmese artist Htein Lin (b.1966, Myanmar) runs the gamut of painting to installation to performance. Having participated in the failed uprising of 1988, he was forced to flee underground, spending several years in refugee camps on the border. He escaped and returned to Yangon in the early 1990s but was again arrested and jailed on charges of opposition activity. He subsequently spent almost seven years behind bars and was released only in 2004. During this time, he developed his artistic practice by using materials he could find in prison such as prison uniforms and soaps. After his release, he moved to London in 2006 but returned to Myanmar in 2013.
Moe Satt
Moe Satt (b.1983, Yangon, Myanmar) is a visual and performance artist whose practice explores 20th century history in Myanmar. He is the founder of ‘Beyond Pressure,’ an international festival of performance art in Myanmar. As an artist, he has performed in galleries and staged guerrilla performances on the streets of Yangon. He has actively participated in live arts festivals in Southeast Asia and South Asia.
Khvay Samnang
Khvay Samnang (b. 1982, Svay Rieng, Cambodia) graduated from the Royal University of Fine Arts in Phnom Penh, Cambodia. His artistic practice spans a wide range of media including performance, photography, video and installation, often using humour and symbolism to address the humanitarian and ecological impacts of colonialism and globalisation. Khvay is also a founding member of Stiev Selapak, an art collective focused on reevaluating and preserving Cambodian history and visual practices disrupted by civil war and the Khmer Rouge regime. He currently lives and works in Phnom Pen.
The Propeller Group
The Propeller Group was formed in 2006 by Phunam Thuc Ha (b. 1974, Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam), Tuan Andrew Nguyen (b. 1976, Ho Chi Minh City), with its third member Matt Lucero (b. 1976, Upland, California) joining them in 2009. All three members have nurtured independent practices outside the collective, but since 2017, they have gradually moved away from identifying as a collective to pursue individual trajectories.
The Group is known for deploying the language and strategies of street culture, popular culture, and communications, encompassing advertising, marketing, branding campaigns, Hollywood movies, music videos, and documentary films. Their subjects of focus predominantly revolve around Vietnam’s political, ideological, and cultural histories, the aftermath of the Vietnam War, and their engagement with broader themes of mass cultural production and consumption.
Kawita Vatanajyankur
Kawita Vatanajuanjur (b. 1998, Bangkok, Thailand) uses her body to investigate and challenge the intersections of womanhood, labor, and consumerism. By taking on the repetitive and strenuous tasks associated with domestic objects and mechanical tools, she blends human and machine, embodying a cyborg-like role. Drawing from a globalized and digitally networked visual language of consumption and instant gratification, her captivating videos resemble bold and colorful commercial advertisements. Yet, beneath their alluring surface, her rigorous works are challenging to witness, serving as a testament to human capability and female resilience.
Minstrel Kuik
Minstrel Kuik (b. 1976, Malaysia) left her hometown Pantai Remis at 18 years old. After earning a Bachelor of Fine Art degree in Taiwan, she obtained her master’s degree in photography in Arles, France. Kuik works across a range of mediums, including photography, drawing, poetry, textile, mixed-media assemblage and installation, with a focus on women’s writing (Écriture féminine).
The access to different cultures through her multilingual education has come amid the first awareness about the politics of place, gender and identity, to which her migratory body has to constantly conform or adapt. With a belief that the private space is the major battlefield of ideological, political and economic interests, Kuik explores art as a historical trajectory where the personal mutation through the process of reading, thinking, making, revisiting and counterbalancing is traceable, and hopefully, reflective and transformative.
Svay Sareth
Svay Sareth (b. 1972, Cambodia) works in sculpture, installation, and durational performance, employing materials and processes associated with war: metals, uniforms, camouflage, and actions requiring great endurance. Svey began making art as a young teenager in the Site 2 refugee camp near the Thai-Cambodian border. Drawing and painting became a daily activity for Svay—a process of bearing witness to the psychological and physical violence that was an everyday experience, as well as to symbolically escape and dream of change. After the wars ended, Svey went on to co-found Phare Ponleu Selpak, a non-governmental organization and art school in Battambang.
Wong Hoy Cheong
Wong Hoy Cheong (b.1960, Penang) is one of Malaysia’s foremost contemporary artists known for his deep engagement with socio-political activism and issues reflecting the historical and social trajectories of Malaysia’s post-war development. Unrestrained by style or medium, his diverse body of work spans drawing, painting, installation, photography, performance and film. His art critically examines Asian and global history, society and politics through the lens of Malaysia’s colonial and post-colonial experiences, and explores the intersection of history, politics, culture and ethnicity. Wong earned a BA in literature from Brandeis University in 1982, an M.Ed. from Harvard University in 1984, and an MFA in painting from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst in 1986.
Brenda Fajardo
Brenda Fajardo (b.1940, Manila) is an artist, community organiser and art educator whose practice began to take shape during the Marcos dictatorship. Influenced by folk and vernacular culture, mythology, precolonial mysticism and a background in theatre design, her works often reimagine the historical legacies of colonialism and dictatorship in the Philippines. As a founder of Kasibulan, a women’s collective formed in response to the political turmoil of the 1980s, Fajardo also foregrounds feminist concerns and the female gaze in her art.
Sun Xun
Sun Xun (b.1980, China) graduated from the Department of Printmaking at the China Academy of Art in 2005. In 2006, he founded π Animation Studio. Sun’s work ranges from drawings, woodcuts, traditional Chinese ink painting and hand-drawn stop-motion animated films, showcasing a distinct visual language that consists of metaphoric imagery, highly-detailed hand drawings, and dreamy narratives. Growing up in the period immediately following the Cultural Revolution, its lingering aftereffects continue to profoundly impact his practice, leading him to explore themes of global history, culture, memory and politics in his works.
Guo-Liang Tan
Guo-Liang Tan (b.1980, Singapore) is a visual artist working primarily in the field of painting, from which works in other mediums such as text, collage and video sometimes emerge. In his work, surfaces, painterly or otherwise, become a space for performing gestures of affect and conjuring a haunting that converses with the ghosts of abstraction. Gaps and overlaps, traces and fragmentation feature prominently in Tan’s making process. He is interested in how these frames orientate our sense of time, body and memory. Tan completed his BA in Fine Art & Critical Studies at Goldsmiths College, London and his MFA at Glasgow School of Art.
Melati Suryodarmo
Melati Suryodarmo's (b. 1969, Solo, Indonesia) work is the result of ongoing research into the movements of the body and its relationship to the self and the world. These are enshrined in photography, translated into choreographed dances, enacted in video or executed in live performances. Her work is known for long durational performances, influenced by Butoh, dance, and history, among others. By compiling, extracting, conceptualizing and translating some of these factors of presence that she recognizes into her work, she intends to tease open the fluid border between the body and its environment, expressing her concerns about the cultural, societal, and political dimensions.
Apichatpong Weerasethakul
Apichatpong Weerasethakul (b. 1970, Bangkok) creates installations, videos, short and feature films that are often non-linear and transmit a strong sense of dislocation and otherworldliness. Often set in rural Thai villages and forests, his films traverse an extremely personal territory, inviting viewers to enter the subjective world of memory, myth, and deep yearning. He earned a B.Arch. from Khon Kaen University in 1994 and an MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 1997. Apichatpong has been active in promoting experimental and independent films through Kick the Machine, a company he founded in 1999.
Jerome Kugan
Jerome Kugan (b. 1975, Kota Kinabalu, Sabah) is a visual artist, writer, and musician based between Kuala Lumpur and Kota Kinabalu. His work is personal, sensual, textual, dreamy, queer, punk, poetic, irreverent, silly, and surreal. A self-taught artist, Kugan works across a range of materials, including painting, woodcarving, illustration, and text. Jerome received his Bachelor’s degree in Professional Writing from the University of Canberra, Australia.
Dusadee Huntrakul
Dusadee Huntrakul (b.1978, Bangkok) is a multidisciplinary artist who works with sculpture, ceramic, drawing, painting and text. His art explores human connections across time, spanning the topics of archaeology, anthropology and urban ecological observation. Inspired by his late brother’s ceramic pots from a community college pottery class, Dusadee began working with clay almost twenty years ago at his uncle’s ceramic studio in Bangkok, and remains to this day committed to using fired clay, language, and other materials to compose spaces that are familiar yet unknown.
Tengku Sabri Tengku Ibrahim
Tengku Sabri Tengku Ibrahim (b.1961, Terengganu) first learnt the craft of traditional carpentry and woodcarving from his father, master craftsman Tengku Ibrahim Wook. He later studied sculpture and print-making at the MARA Institute of Technology (now Universiti MARA Teknologi) in Shah Alam, Selangor from 1982 to 1986. In 1998, he earned an M.A in Art & Design Education from De Montfort University in Leicester, United Kingdom. Tengku Sabri has taught at Multimedia University in Cyberjaya and currently lives and works in Puchong, Selangor.
Imhathai Suwatthanasilp
Imhathai Suwatthanasilp (b.1981, Bangkok) is known for her distinctive use of human hair in her practice, which she weaves, crochets, embroiders, or laces into intimate two- and three-dimensional works. Relating hair to the human experience through works that are tactile and emotive, her pieces explore themes such as gender, mortality, belief and rituals, reflecting on the character and behaviours observed in Thai society. Imhathai holds a Bachelor’s and a Master’s degree in Thai Arts from Silpakorn University, Bangkok.
artwork highlight
related programmes
check out the line-up of free and ticketed event below!
GUIDED TOUR
Join us on a guided tour and gain insights on selected artworks in this tour of the exhibition, Everyday Practices
• Docent-Led Tour:
- Japanese Tour: Every Thu–Sat |10:30am–11:30am
- English Tour: Every Thu–Sun |2pm–3pm
Artist’s statement, poster and silkscreen print on paper; Poster: 44.7 x 28.5 cm; Artist’s statement: 28 x 21.5 cm; Silkscreen print: 127 x 97 cm
On 30 September 1978, Tehching Hsieh locked himself in a holding cell measuring (353 x 274 x 243 cm) within his New York apartment. Constructed from pine, it had only a wash basin, light, pail and single bed. There he pledged to remain confined and in solitude for a year, during which he would not talk, read, write, listen to the radio nor watch television. The public was invited to visit him on select dates. This became the first of Hsieh’s five year-long durational performances, in which preset rules foreground the element of time and endurance. The severity of this performance is matched by the meticulousness of its documentation: Hsieh made notches on the wall and arranged for photographs of him to be taken daily to mark the passage of time. The wall marks are presented here as a silkscreen print, alongside the artist’s statement and a poster indicating the public viewing dates. These elements emphasise that it is Hsieh’s time and experience that constitute his artwork.
Gift of Hallam Chow
Collection of Singapore Art Museum
Installation view of Tehching Hsieh’s ‘One Year Performance 1978–1979’ as part of ‘Everyday Practices’ at SAM at Tanjong Pagar Distripark. Image courtesy of Singapore Art Museum.
Maria TaniguchiUntitled
2017
Acrylic on canvas 304.8 x 457.2 cm
Is this a painting or sculpture, an abstract or representational work? Maria Taniguchi’s untitled canvas subverts these conventional categories of art. The painted plane is propped against the wall at an incline, insisting on its three-dimensionality. Follow the brickwork covering the surface; the pattern runs on, seemingly endless. It is a visual and conceptual device that Taniguchi has devised to connect this painting to the others in the series. Over and over, she painstakingly outlined each brick in pencil and washed it with black acrylic. The paint’s varying dilutions create subtle tonal shifts, annotating the monochromatic surface with temporal records of Taniguchi’s process. The brick, a modular building block in our everyday environment, and Taniguchi’s steady production carry associations to labour.
Collection of Singapore Art Museum
Detail view of Maria Taniguchi’s ‘Untitled’ (2017) as part of ‘Everyday Practices’ at SAM at Tanjong Pagar Distripark. Image courtesy of Singapore Art Museum.
Htein LinUntitled
2016
Soap and a poster; Dimensions variable
Hundreds of household soap blocks are arranged to form a map of Myanmar in this installation, with the red-coloured ones marking where political prisoners have been held in the country. On closer look, a tiny figure is carved into each soap; it is hunched over and trapped within the rectangle. They hark back to when Htein Lin was incarcerated for political dissent in Myanmar and had produced artworks using common items he had at hand, which included such soaps and prison uniforms. The soaps are of the Shwe Wah brand, which means Golden Yellow in Burmese, referring to the country’s nickname, the Golden Land, thus named for its innumerable glittering pagodas. According to Htein Lin, it was for decades the only brand available as Myanmar was isolated under military regime: “It was a kind of brainwashing, the way we lived in the dark.” This installation amplifies the collective helplessness the Burmese often faced under military rule.
Collection of Singapore Art Museum
Detail view of Htein Lin’s ‘Soap Blocked’ (2016) as part of ‘Everyday Practices’ at SAM at Tanjong Pagar Distripark. Image courtesy of Singapore Art Museum.
Minstrel KuikDomesticated Politics
2015
Digital print on fabric; Each 76 x 44 cm
In Domesticated Politics, nine DIY flags are hung on a line, like laundry. They are made in the proportions of the Malaysian national flag but are sized closer to pillowcases. Follow the sequence of images printed on the flags: they show Minstrel Kuik folding and ironing the flags of political parties used in Malaysia’s General Elections held in May 2013. With each deliberate crease, Kuik abstracts the political iconography printed on the campaign flags, rendering them—as she says—“mute.” Folded away, the flags are “kept immobile” and removed from circulation. Through this domestic activity, Kuik seeks to “feminise, to soften the once exuberant, masculine and heroic objects.
Kuik continues to develop works using the political paraphernalia left from these elections. They were originally collected by Kuik’s university students for a photography assignment that did not eventualise. Disappointed by the election results, and haunted by the material, Kuik was compelled to action.
Collection of Singapore Art Museum
Detail view of Minstrel Kuik’s ‘Domesticated Politics’ (2015) as part of ‘Everyday Practices’ at SAM at Tanjong Pagar Distripark. Image courtesy of Singapore Art Museum.
The Propeller GroupStatic Friction: Burning Rubber
2012
Video: single channel, 16:9 aspect ratio, colour and sound (stereo), 3 min 46 sec; print on paper mounted on Dilite; Each 48 x 27 cm
The Propeller Group is known for deploying the language and strategies of street culture, popular culture and media communication. Their works explore Vietnam’s political, ideological and cultural histories, the aftermath of the Vietnam War, and broader themes of mass cultural production and consumption.
In Static Friction: Burning Rubber, a rider attempts a dramatic motorcycle stunt called the burnout. Each spin of the wheels generates plumes of smoke and draws trails of black rubber on the asphalt. A modest scooter is used here, the kind commonly seen on the streets of Vietnam. It is an unusual choice as the stunt is typically performed with luxury motorcycles of higher engine capacities for their showiness and agility. Regarded as symbols of socioeconomical status, these flashier motorcycles have legislation restricting their ownership, and are unattainable by most Vietnamese. In this context, the performance takes on a new light, as an expression of defiance and reclaiming power.
Collection of the Artists
Installation view of The Propeller Group’s ‘Static Friction: Burning Rubber’ (2012) as part of ‘Everyday Practices’ at SAM at Tanjong Pagar Distripark. Image courtesy of Singapore Art Museum.
The Propeller GroupCollision: Urban Sporty Mover
2012
Vinyl decals and polyurethane varnish on aluminium panel; 100 x 178 cm
The Propeller Group is known for deploying the language and strategies of street culture, popular culture and media communication. Their works explore Vietnam’s political, ideological and cultural histories, the aftermath of the Vietnam War, and broader themes of mass cultural production and consumption.
Hard-edged graphics are reflected and rotated along axes of symmetry in Collision: Urban Sporty Mover. The resulting radial pattern is a riotous display of collisions and forces of impact. Reminiscent of comics, the graphics also borrow the designs of vinyl decals prevalent in bike and car modification cultures. This use of popular culture as powerful artistic expression evokes the Pop art movement, where traditional views of fine art are undermined by elements of mass production and commercialism.
Gift of Hallam Chow
Collection of Singapore Art Museum
Installation view of The Propeller Group’s ‘Collision: Urban Sporty Mover’ (2012) as part of ‘Everyday Practices’ at SAM at Tanjong Pagar Distripark. Image courtesy of Singapore Art Museum.
Sun XunBeyond-ism
2008-2010
Ink, colour and collage on paper, and video; Video: single channel, 16:9 aspect ratio, colour and sound (stereo), 8 min 8 sec; Book: 30 x 1100 cm
At the behest of the Chinese Qin Dynasty emperor, the alchemist Xu Fu voyaged to the East in search of the elixir of life—an ancient legend goes. Xu purportedly landed in Japan instead and, never returning to court, became the island’s first emperor. Drawing inspiration from this tale, Sun created Beyond-ism’s dream-like world. He samples poetry by the Chinese communist revolutionary Mao Zedong, and other myths of China and Japan, using a storytelling technique to incorporate them out of chronology. Through blending reality and fiction, history and mythology, Sun contests the singular accounts of history we accept as truth, leading us to question the narrative devices employed in the construction of collective memory.
Gift of Hallam Chow
Collection of Singapore Art Museum
Detail view of Sun Xun’s ‘Beyond-ism’ (2008-2010) as part of ‘Everyday Practices’ at SAM at Tanjong Pagar Distripark. Image courtesy of Singapore Art Museum.
Wong Hoy CheongTapestry of Justice
1999–2004
Thumbprints, petals and leaves; 2000 x 89 cm
Over 10,000 photocopied thumbprints are connected into a delicate tapestry, punctuated with leaves and petals from plants, such as the hibiscus (Malaysia’s national flower), rose and beech. The artist conceived this installation to serve simultaneously as a work of art and a petition. This was during Malaysia’s late 1990s Reformasi movement, when the redress of social injustices and other political issues held sway. For the next six years, the artist collected the thumbprints shown here to repeal the nation’s Internal Security Act, which allowed for detention without trial. The dual symbolism of thumbprints is ironic—conventionally viewed as evidential of criminal activity, the thumbprint was also the most reliable form of personal identification before the advent of DNA sequencing. Fragile and hopeful, the tapestry emphasises the power of collective effort in effecting transformation.
Collection of Singapore Art Museum
Detail view of Wong Hoy Cheong’s ‘Tapestry of Justice’ (1999-2004) as part of ‘Everyday Practices’ at SAM at Tanjong Pagar Distripark. Image courtesy of Singapore Art Museum.
Guo-Liang TanPeripheral Ritual I–III
2018
Acrylic on aeronautical fabric stretched over wood; 163 x 408 cm
Peripheral Ritual I–III consists of three paintings that were created separately but are here presented as a triptych. Across the panels, thinned paint is allowed to flow, diffuse and spread without direct brush contact. This method, applied to the slightly water-resistant aeronautical fabric surfaces, produces stains and marks that appear accidental. They are, however, meticulously composed through a process akin to choreography. The artist describes his approach as using his “own body to respond to the painting as objects,” employing gestures such as shifting, tilting and turning. This physicality of the paintings is also asserted by the wooden stretcher bars that are visible through the translucent fabric. The amorphous hues evoke the appearance of bruised skin and suggest the body’s capacity to endure.
Collection of Singapore Art Museum
Detail view of Tan Guo-Liang’s ‘Peripheral Ritual I–III’ (2018) as part of ‘Everyday Practices’ at SAM at Tanjong Pagar Distripark. Image courtesy of Singapore Art Museum.
Jerome KuganThe Internalised Self series (Atlas, Apollo, Icarus, Ganymede)
2018
Watercolour and pencil on used HIV-medication packaging paper; Various dimensions
Ambiguous, androgynous figures devoid of genitalia and hair are depicted against crimson backgrounds, on recycled carton packages of antiretroviral drugs. The medication gestures to the artist’s HIV-positive status, rendering this series deeply autobiographical. Striking dramatic poses, the figures mime the Greek myths of Ganymede, Atlas, Icarus and Apollo, after how they are typically portrayed in early history paintings: Ganymede, desired for his youthful beauty, was abducted by Zeus in the guise of an eagle, and became both immortal cupbearer and the object of Zeus’s desire; Atlas, punished for siding with the losing side in the Titan-Olympian war, was burdened with the weight of heavens for eternity; Icarus plunged into the sea after soaring too close to the sun despite his father’s advice; Apollo, god of the sun, whose charisma masked an egoistic, jealous and sometimes vengeful nature. The fates and symbolism of these four characters resonate with Kugan’s sense of the tragedy and irony of his own predicament.
Collection of Singapore Art Museum
Installation view of Jerome Kugan’s ‘The Internalised Self series (Atlas, Apollo, Icarus, Ganymede)’ (2018) as part of ‘Everyday Practices’ at SAM at Tanjong Pagar Distripark. Image courtesy of Singapore Art Museum.
Imhathai SuwatthanasilpThe Flower Field
2012
Hair, bed frame, acrylic sheets and LED lights; 100 x 210 x 57 cm
In this field of bright white light, thousands of intricate flowers seem to float. Ethereal and idyllic, they evoke a utopian realm of rest and reward, like Elysium. On closer look, the fuzzy flowers are found to be meticulously handspun balls of hair, specifically the hair shorn of cancer patients, survivors and donors in the Hair for Hope charity programme. These are arranged on a lightbox that Imhathai Suwatthanasilp had repurposed from a bed frame. Starkly backlit, the strands offer a tender tribute to the resilience of the human spirit. Imhathai dedicates her craftsmanship towards a message of hope for a brighter future.
Collection of Singapore Art Museum
Detail view of Imhathai Suwatthanasilp’s ‘The Flower Field’ (2012) as part of ‘Everyday Practices’ at SAM at Tanjong Pagar Distripark. Image courtesy of Singapore Art Museum.
