Singapore Biennale 2025 Review: Divorced From Reality
The 8th Singapore Biennale, titled 'pure intention', features artworks like Gala Porras-Kim's picnic blanket sold in migrant-worker shops, intended to blur lines between art and daily life. The exhibition, curated by SAM staff, deliberately explores contradictions in artistic intention and challenges notions of purity and power through over 80 artists' works.
The eighth edition of the Singapore Biennale, titled "Pure Intention," opens across five neighborhoods in Singapore, embedding over 100 artworks in sites ranging from shopping malls and housing estates to colonial-era buildings and parks. Curated by Selene Yap, Hsu Fang-Tze, Ong Puay Khim, and Duncan Bass, the biennale features works like field-0's "Drifting Bodies" (2025), which critiques Singapore's hydropower imports and their impact on Thailand's indigenous Karen hill tribe, and Allora & Calzadilla's "Under Discussion" (2004), exploring sovereignty and displacement. Organized by the Singapore Art Museum and commissioned by the National Arts Council, the event is part of SG60, Singapore's 60th anniversary celebrations.