Performance Artist Amanda Heng Will Represent Singapore at 2026 Venice Biennale
The veteran artist has been chosen to draw on her decades‑long interdisciplinary practice which explores bodies as sites of memory, care, and encounter through performance and installation. Save to My OculaFeminist performance artist Amanda Heng will represent Singapore at the 2026 Venice Biennale, with Singapore Art Museum’s Selene Yap being appointed to lead the exhibition’s curatorial direction.
Heng, 74, whose performances have critiqued gender roles within traditional Chinese culture—exploring topics like female infanticide, the beauty industry, and domestic labour—was selected for the ‘strength and continued relevance’ of her work.
Museum director Eugene Tan said Heng’s artistic career and contributions have critically shaped Singapore’s art history and development.
Meanwhile, National Arts Council CEO and co-chair Low Eng Teong called Heng a ‘pioneering force in performance art,’ noting that her focus on body and movement provides ‘a universal language for audiences to engage with Singaporean art’.
Born in 1951, Heng originally trained in printmaking before developing feminist pieces like a public march of women holding high-heeled shoes in their mouths and a digital archive of women’s bums challenging demure stereotypes of women in Singapore.
In 1999, she founded Singapore’s first artist-run women’s collective, Women In The Arts. In 2010, she received Singapore’s Cultural Medallion, the nation’s highest artistic honour.
The Singapore Pavilion is commissioned by the government-backed National Arts Council and organised by SAM.
Previous representatives include Robert Zhao Renhui (2024), Shubigi Rao (2022), and Song-Ming Ang (2019).
The Venice Biennale will run from 9 May to 22 November 2026. —[O]
Main image: Curator Selene Yap and Amanda Heng (2025). Courtesy Singapore Art Museum.
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