Singapore Pavilion 2026

About the presentation

Image courtesy of Singapore Art Museum

For the Singapore Pavilion at the 61st International Art Exhibition - La Biennale di Venezia, Amanda Heng Liang Ngim transforms the historic Sale d’Armi into a space for rest and observation. A Pause brings together photographs, video and an architectural intervention centred on ordinary actions such as sitting, waiting, and watching.

The work is a culmination of Heng’s four-decade practice, drawing on her sustained attention to the body, everyday gestures, and unscripted social encounter. The presentation reflects a shift from the charged immediacy of her early public performances to a quieter, more interior mode of attention.

Artist - Amanda Heng Liang Ngim

Image courtesy of Singapore Art Museum

Amanda Heng (born 1951, Singapore) is a pioneering contemporary artist whose interdisciplinary practice spans performance, installation, photography, and participatory art. Emerging in the late 1980s during a pivotal shift in Singapore’s art scene, Heng is known for her body-centric works that interrogate gender roles, societal expectations, and lived memory through everyday gestures.

Heng’s long-running performance works, such as Let’s Walk (1999–ongoing), Walking the Stool (2000), and Let’s Chat (1999–ongoing), mobilise the body as a site of social encounter—using simple, quotidian acts to provoke reflection on care, connection, and resilience. Her photographic series Another Woman (1996, 2014, 2023) delicately traces intergenerational intimacy through repeated portraits with her mother.

A founding member of The Artists Village (1988) and Women in the Arts (1999), Heng has been pivotal in shaping Singapore’s contemporary and feminist discourse. Her work has been featured in major biennales and performance art festivals, including Bangkok Art Biennale (2024), Singapore Biennale (2006, 2019), and the inaugural Women’s Performance Art Festival in Osaka (2001).

Curator - Selene Yap

Image courtesy of Singapore Art Museum

Selene Yap (born 1988, Singapore) is a Curator at Singapore Art Museum (SAM). Her curatorial practice follows a situational approach, developing research and exhibitions in close dialogue with artists whose work respond to the contingencies and particularities of place, process and memory. Yap has curated significant solo and joint presentations of artists Pratchaya Phinthong (No Patents on Ideas, 2024), Simryn Gill & Charles Lim Yi Yong (The Sea is a Field, 2024), Ho Tzu Nyen (Time & the Tiger, 2023), and Joo Choon Lin (Dance in the Destruction Dance, 2023)—projects marked by critical engagement and conceptual depth. She was recently appointed as one of the four curators for Singapore Biennale 2025.

Before joining SAM, Yap held research roles at the Future Cities Laboratory and the Singapore University of Technology and Design. She also served as Programme Manager for Visual Arts at The Substation, supporting exhibitions and initiatives that sought to defy conventional use of the arts space. As an independent curator, she co-curated State of Motion: Rushes of Time (2020) with the Asian Film Archive, exploring temporality and the moving image through film and installation.

Commissioner - Mrs Elaine Ng (CEO, National Arts Council)

For more info, please visit the exhibition website: Singapore Pavilion | Singapore Art Museum ↗ (opens in new tab)