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31 Oct 2025 to 29 Mar 2026
Singapore Biennale 2025:
pure intention
Singapore Biennale 2025: pure intention presents contemporary art in multiple venues and public spaces, inviting audiences of all walks of life to experience Singapore’s many layers built by all of those who have been a part of its history, collectively creating a city that is as planned as it is full of discovery, surprises and interesting juxtapositions.
Through an exploration of art in everyday environments, audiences will be engaged to see familiar spaces in Singapore with fresh eyes and new perspectives, paying attention to the rituals, histories, lived experiences and aspirations that have shaped our environments and urban lives.
As part of the SG60 celebrations, the Biennale offers Singaporeans an opportunity to reflect on the nation’s historic milestones and shared aspirations while imagining possible collective futures.
The Biennale will engage with spaces ranging from pre-colonial and colonial landmarks transformed into public, green areas repurposed for recreation, residential neighbourhoods and lived spaces, to shopping centres that have evolved into social spaces for Singapore’s diverse communities.
More information on the participating artists, venues and programmes will be released later in 2025.
About Singapore Biennale
The Singapore Biennale was established in 2006 as the country’s pre-eminent platform for international dialogue in contemporary art. It presents and reflects the vigour of artistic practices in Singapore and the region within a global context, and fosters productive collaborations and deep engagement with artists, arts organisations, and the international arts community.
The Singapore Biennale cultivates public engagement with contemporary art through a period of concerted activities including exhibitions, public engagement and education programmes that feature artist and curator talks and tours, school visits and workshops, and community days. It complements achievements in other areas of arts and culture, collectively enhancing Singapore’s international profile as a vibrant city in which to live, work and play.
The 2006 and 2008 editions of the Biennale were organised by the National Arts Council (NAC). NAC has commissioned SAM to organise the Biennale since 2011.
For more information, follow us on our social media channels:
Facebook: @singaporebiennale
Instagram: @sgbiennale
curators
The Biennale will be led by a curatorial network that unites a range of diverse viewpoints, backgrounds and expertise from art collectives, institutions and organisations from Singapore and overseas to create an engaging Biennale experience.
At its core are the curators:
Duncan Bass is a Curator at SAM. His writing and curatorial projects explore the intersections of art and contemporary culture, emphasising the societal implications of emerging technologies. For the Biennale, Bass is particularly interested in mining contradiction, absurdity, and magical thinking as expressions of contemporary social and political anxieties.
Hsu Fang-Tze is a Curator at SAM. Hsu has previous experience as a lecturer in the Department of Communications and New Media at the National University of Singapore (NUS). In the past decade, she has broadened her expertise by actively participating in various artistic endeavours as a curator, film programmer, and archivist. For the Biennale, she is interested in investigating the historical context surrounding art in public spaces by examining the interplay between urban development experiences, community aspirations, and both official and non-official placemaking initiatives.
Ong Puay Khim is the Director of Collections, Public Art and Programmes at SAM. Prior to SAM, she held curatorial positions at the NTU CCA Singapore and ICAS LASALLE. She was part of the curatorial team of Bangkok Art Biennale 2020 and the curator of the Southeast Asia Platform at Art Stage Singapore in 2015. For the Biennale, Ong is interested in engaging practices that respond to and/or are interventions on everyday phenomena as well as reflections on spatiotemporal dimension of place and geography.
Selene Yap is a Curator at SAM. Yap previously held research positions at the Future Cities Laboratory and Singapore University of Technology and Design. She was also Programme Manager for Visual Arts at The Substation where she provided research and curatorial support for the exhibitions. She also previously co-curated several exhibitions as an independent curator. For the Biennale, she is interested in the discussions that challenge the notions of placing and belonging and call to attention the constitutive aspect of absence, dislocation and distancing in the subjective experience of landscape.
contributors
The curators have invited contributions from independent organisations and curatorial collectives around the world. Together, they will bring new and existing projects by local and international artists and artist-run initiatives into public spaces around Singapore.
Asian Film Archive (Singapore)
Asian Film Archive (founded in 2005) is a non-profit organisation that preserves the rich film heritage of Asian Cinema. Asian Film Archive aspires to be a hub for the Asian film community, contributing to culture, scholarship and industry through organised screenings, educational and cultural programmes that open and enrich new intellectual, educational and creative spaces, to promote a wider critical appreciation of this art form.
Hothouse (Singapore)
Hothouse (founded in 2020) is a site for exchange between artists, creatives, businesses, and local-international audiences. Throughout the years, Hothouse has presented multi-media productions reframing and challenging boundaries between fields of operations. The space has produced the speculative interdisciplinary exhibition Deep Field Cinema, as well as the live broadcast symposium about art and life, In Suspension. Today, it maintains a technological transdisciplinary focus with an international and intergenerational perspective through its signature programme of residencies, events, and publications.
Image courtesy of Hothouse
Hyphen— (Indonesia)
Hyphen— was co-initiated in 2011 by Ratna Mufida, Pitra Hutomo, and Grace Samboh as a sustainable conversational space regarding aesthetic practices. Not long after, that space expanded through engagement in various artistic activities, including exhibition-making, various forms of publishing, archiving, research, open-ended conversations, karaoke, barbecue nights, feasts, etcetera. Hyphen— aims to put forward curiosity and people’s common wellbeing as the estuary of artistic practices. They were joined by Akmalia Rizqita “Chita” and Rachel K. Surijata (in 2020); as well as Ruhaeni Intan and Andri Setiawan (in 2023). was co-initiated in 2011 by Ratna Mufida, Pitra Hutomo, and Grace Samboh as a sustainable conversational space regarding aesthetic practices. Not long after, that space expanded through engagement in various artistic activities, including exhibition-making, various forms of publishing, archiving, research, open-ended conversations, karaoke, barbecue nights, feasts, etcetera. Hyphen— aims to put forward curiosity and people’s common wellbeing as the estuary of artistic practices. They were joined by Akmalia Rizqita “Chita” and Rachel K. Surijata (in 2020); as well as Ruhaeni Intan and Andri Setiawan (in 2023).
They currently play with explorations on the practices of Gerakan Seni Rupa Baru Indonesia (Indonesia New Art Movement, 1975-1989), Kustiyah (1935-2012), and Danarto (1940-2018); exhibition histories surrounding Kesenian Indonesia (Indonesian Art, 1955), BINAL Experimental Arts (1992), Contemporary Art Exhibition of the Non-Aligned Countries (1995); while attempting to unravel Indonesia’s so-called national history through its visual representations.
Image courtesy of Hyphen
SAVVY Contemporary (Germany)
SAVVY Contemporary (established in 2009) is an artistic organisation, discursive platform, place for good talks, foods and drinks – a space for conviviality and cultural plurilog. As a public and independent organism in perpetual becoming, it is animated by around 25 members and a network of collaborators, co-creating community and communities it breathes with. SAVVY Contemporary situates itself at the threshold of the West and the non-West to understand their conceptualisations, ethical systems, achievements, and ruins. It develops tools, proposes perspectives and nourishes practices towards imagining a world inhabited together.
SAVVY Contemporary composes life-worlds through its commitments to exhibition-making, research, sonic and visual cultures, embodied knowledges, and other heritages of creativity.
Image courtesy of SAVVY Contemporary
The Packet (Sri Lanka)
The Packet (established in 2019) is made up of a group of artists from Sri Lanka. With a particular focus on hyper-locality, collaborative processes and conversation, it grew out of 8 artists coming together to realize an artist publication entitled The Packet. While a core group of members continue to drive its work, The Packet functions as a collaborative platform that has embraced the work of 19 young artists in Sri Lanka to date. They work across print and digital mediums, with site-specific interventions that respond to a stratified world, exploring what it looks like ‘to do thinking in public’. Their work has been featured in the Serendipity Arts Festival (2019, 2020), the Goethe Institut’s Day-Afterthoughts project (2020), among others.
Image courtesy of The Packet
related programmes
check out the line-up of free and ticketed event below!
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SAW at SAM
Catch live performances after dark, on 17-19 January, and a vibrant art market on 24-26 January. Enjoy free entry to exhibitions by Robert Zhao, Yee I-Lann, and Pratchaya Phinthong.
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