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 review argues the biennial's core issue is ambiguity: it's unclear for whom these socially engaged works are intended or what their practical impact is. While aiming to critique how art institutions operate, the exhibition risks becoming an inward-looking exercise that is 'divorced from reality,' failing to meaningfully connect with the communities or public spaces it references.