106B Depot Road is the address of the artist’s home and studio, where he has lived and worked for sixteen years. Public housing, the most common form of real estate available to Singapore’s citizens, is regarded as a prized asset. Produced from the artist’s memory and description rather than architectural plans, and further translated into a built model, this reconstruction may be said to be as accurate in its realisation as the potential and projected returns of actual property.

Image credits: Installation view of 106B Depot Road Singapore 102106 (2024). Image courtesy of Singapore Art Museum.

An approximately 500-word short story written by Chong is taught by an instructor to an audience participant who agrees to commit it to memory, demonstrating this through an exact retelling within the session of instruction. Never published, the story exists only through oral transmission, requiring an exchange of time and effort to experience the work.

To participate, please send an email with name and contact information to hemanchong.memories@singaporeartmuseum.sg

Image credits: Heman Chong A Short Story About Geometry (2009). Image courtesy of SeMA (Seoul Museum of Art).

A sculptural project initiated in 2003, Stacks is an annual and ongoing series, with each iteration developed over the course of a year that also acknowledges the rhythm of this chronological threshold. Consisting of books and glasses Chong read and used in the previous year—familiar and ordinary domestic objects, yet personally meaningful—each “stack” acts as both punctuation and a record of time passed.

Image credits: Detail view of Apple & Knife, The Lovely Bones, How to buy real estate overseas, Real Estate in Corporate Strategy from the series “Stacks” (2019). Image courtesy of Singapore Art Museum.

Presenting 1,001 photographs captured in Singapore between 2004 and 2010, arranged across seven decades of calendar pages, the artwork projects these paradoxically emptied images of public spaces into the unknowable reaches of the future. This chronological order and design recall the strategies of 1960s conceptual art in the representation of sequential time through grid and repetition. Devoid of human presence and activity, the work seems reminiscent of the lockdowns of the recent pandemic as much as it might portend an eerily dystopian future.

Image credits: Installation view of Calendars (2020 - 2096) (2004-2010). Image courtesy of Singapore Art Museum.

Foreign Affairs is a series of seemingly banal photographs of back doors to embassies encountered by the artist during his travels. These back doors mark the threshold of the exceptional space of the embassy, a physical manifestation and limit of the mutual recognition between states of their respective sovereignty and security.

Image credits: Installation view of Foreign Affairs #106 (2018/2025). Image courtesy of Singapore Art Museum.

An underfoot monument, blacked-out name cards multiply to engulf the floor, introducing both texture and instability, even as its title fills the viewer with an overpowering sense of finality and the existential weight of unrealised connections.

Image credits: Detail view of Monument to the people we've conveniently forgotten (I hate you) (2008). Image courtesy of Singapore Art Museum.

Consisting of 550 postcards that feature photographs taken by Chong as he walked the circumference of Singapore, Perimeter Walk captures the scenography of the island’s edges. With images of sand walls, signs of border surveillance, tents, workers resting by the roadside and lush vegetation, the work contrasts with the slick and idealised branding of the city-state. Formatted as postcards, visitors are invited to partake in the circulation and consumption of these images by selecting and keeping them or sharing with others.

Image credits: Installation view of Perimeter Walk (2013-2024). Image courtesy of Singapore Art Museum.

Comprising 326 spy and espionage novels shredded by the artist, the work’s deconstructed form—reduced to individual lines of text—is not intended as an act of destruction but as a rearrangement of meaning that reflects the undercover and cryptic nature of their original narratives.

Image credits: Detail view of Secrets and Lies (The Impossibility of Reconstitutions) (2012). Image courtesy of Singapore Art Museum.

A reference library amassed through a public call for donations of unread books. Described by Chong as a social sculpture, the library is also a commons, growing its inventory with each presentation. The Library of Unread Books, collected by Singapore Art Museum, was previously presented at the Singapore Biennale 2022.

Image credits: Installation view of The Library of Unread Books (2016-ongoing). Image courtesy of Singapore Art Museum.

As with other national flags, the Singapore flag is a symbol of statehood that represents the ideals, beliefs and values of the nation. As text, the artwork reproduces an official description of the flag, rendered in the same shade of red as the state flag, allowing the flag to be imagined rather than seen.

Image credits: Detail view of The Singapore Flag (2015). Image courtesy of Singapore Art Museum.

Abstracts From The Straits Times is a series based on journalistic headlines and accompanying photo documentation from The Straits Times, Singapore’s daily newspaper. Through repetition and overlap, Chong effectively “submerges” and “blacks out” their messages, mirroring the glitch that enabled and was introduced during the making of the work.

Image credits: Installation view of The Straits Times, Friday, September 27, 2013, Cover (2018). Image courtesy of Singapore Art Museum.

On 8 July 2006, Chong began writing a 200-page novel, Prospectus. The story centres on a retrospective exhibition of an artist accused of plagiarising from a younger artist—the work in question being a novel also titled Prospectus, which is about a master plan for an imaginary art school. Frustrated during the editing process, Chong deleted the novel.

Image credits: Detail view of Works on Paper #2: Prospectus (2006/2024). Image courtesy of Singapore Art Museum.

Designed in the artist’s distinctive typographic style, this limited-edition tote bag embodies the exhibition’s exploration of ambiguity—where text becomes artwork and meaning remains intentionally open.

Retail price: SGD28.00 incl. GST
Material: Premium Canvas Cotton
Color: Navy Blue
Size: 16 oz
Specifications: Width 40 x Height 45 x Base 15 cm

A key artist in Singapore’s art history, Heman Chong’s multi-faceted practice dates back to the early 2000s. This publication accompanies a survey exhibition of the same name, which presents recent artworks including new commissions that reconsider canonical pieces from his oeuvre. Known for his acerbic wit, Chong’s art addresses contemporary geopolitics and the infrastructural ironies of our data-driven and networked society. Heman Chong: This is a dynamic list and may never be able to satisfy particular standards for completeness surveys the artist’s practice, with essays by international curators who have collaborated with him throughout his career.

Size: 23cm x 16cm
216 pp, flexibound
Retail price: SGD55.00 incl. GST
ISBN: 978-981-17596-5-9

Click here to purchase the book online