Singapore Biennale 2025 Wants People to Look at the Country Through ‘Fresh Eyes’
Singapore Art Museum unveils a citywide edition with over 80 artists coinciding with Singapore’s 60th anniversary, anchored by the theme of ‘pure intention’. Save to My Ocula
Singapore Biennale has announced over 80 artists for this year’s edition set to run from 31 October until the end of next March.
This eighth edition coincides with Singapore’s 60th birthday and positions art as a tool to reframe the city’s layered histories, spaces, and communities.
Commissioned by the National Arts Council and organised by the Singapore Art Museum, the Biennale will feature more than 100 works, including 30 new commissions, spread across the island.
Highlights include Apichatpong Weerasethakul and Guo-Liang Tan transforming the Rail Corridor into a cinematic environment, Emily Floyd’s Field Library enlivening Wessex Estate, and Joo Choon Lin’s performance-installation staged at Tanglin Halt market.
Meanwhile in the Civic District, Kapwani Kiwanga reconstructs Rwanda’s independence celebrations with fresh foliage, while Tuan Andrew Nguyen creates a participatory soundscape built from remnants of war. At SAM, Pierre Huyghe’s Offspring turns climate conditions and audience presence into shifting variations of light, smoke, and sound.
Anchored by the theme pure intention, the edition is shaped by curators Duncan Bass, Hsu Fang-Tze, Ong Puay Khim, and Selene Yap, whose approach casts the Biennale as a lens to consider Singapore’s rapid urban development, its contradictions, and speculative futures.
Rather than staying within conventional museum walls, projects will animate industrial heritage sites, colonial neighbourhoods, historic housing estates, shopping malls, civic landmarks, and the museum itself—foregrounding the entanglement of memory, architecture, and daily rhythms in Singapore’s urban fabric.
According to the curators, the aim is to spark ‘moments of connection and curiosity towards the cosmopolitan futures we share’.
SB2025 runs from 31 October 2025 to 29 March 2026, with further participants to be announced closer to the opening. —[O]
A respected voice in contemporary art discourse.
Focusing on ambitious storytelling and insightful art-world commentary. Ocula Magazine publishes in-depth interviews, critical essays and timely analysis on the artists, exhibitions and ideas driving the global art world.
Learn more about Ocula Magazine
Showcasing the best of the art world.
Ocula partners with galleries from around the world to highlight their artists, artworks and exhibitions. Gallery membership is by application and invitation, with each member vetted by an independent panel.
Learn more about Ocula Membership
Specialises in the sale of major artworks.
Led by a team with deep ties to the world’s leading auction houses, galleries and collectors. Ocula’s advisory team offers bespoke services to high-net-worth clients from around the world who are looking to acquire the best of contemporary and modern art.
Learn more about our team and services