The city is set to transform into a platform for art once more, as the Singapore Biennale 2025 (SB2025) opens Friday, 31 October. Commissioned by the National Arts Council, Singapore (NAC), supported by the Ministry of Culture, Community and Youth (MCCY), and organised by the Singapore Art Museum (SAM), the SG60 Signature Event spans five key locations—the historic Civic District, lush Wessex Estate, iconic Tanglin Halt, bustling Orchard Road, and SAM at Tanjong Pagar Distripark.

In this 8th edition, themed pure intention, SB2025 is guided by crafting a means of experiencing Singapore through immersive, participatory, and site-responsive works that reflect the rituals, histories, lived experiences and aspirations that have shaped our environments. These encounters encourage the public to discover different layers of the city’s rhythms and evolving identity, opening new ways of seeing, feeling, and connecting through art.

Mr Eugene Tan, Chief Executive Officer and Director of Singapore Art Museum, said, “We are excited to unveil SB2025, where the diversity of artworks and public programmes creates new ways to see our city that contains multitudes. We hope the Biennale will encourage curiosity and reflection through art, inviting our publics to explore the ties between communities, places, and ideas, as well as to reflect on the city and their place within it from new perspectives.”

Tucked between lush greenery and quiet colonial blocks, the Rail Corridor becomes a pathway of memory, weaving through the city as it becomes a place to encounter histories layered in the landscape. Once a railway line connecting Singapore to the Malay Peninsula, the open spaces and neighbourhoods in its vicinity will host artworks that reflect on how infrastructure influences the way people live, remember and belong. Through these works, the Rail Corridor becomes more than a recreational path, it is a space where histories and intentions come into view.

Within an open field in Wessex Estate, Aya Rodriguez-Izumi’s (Japan/USA) Gate: 3 takes shape through communal beading workshops held with local communities in Singapore and New York. Together, participants create over 1000 strands of pony beads for the vibrant installation, while exchanging thoughts on borders and connection. Launching in December, Two Who Remember the Sea, a new commission by Apichatpong Weerasethakul (Thailand) & Guo-Liang Tan (Singapore), extends Weerasethakul’s practice of placing cinematic experiences in outdoor settings. These solar-activated installations settle among the estate’s woodlands. Recalling both ghosts and blank screens, they seek new narratives in the wind and light. Also launching from December is Field Library by Emily Floyd (Australia), an outdoor sculptural installation that is both a space for play and a library. Through a collection of texts that offer critical perspectives on intersecting urgencies such as social production, alternative and feminist pedagogies, it offers a space for questions and conversations.

At Tanglin Halt, art enters the pulse of the early public housing blocks. Adrian Wong’s (USA) With Hate from Hong Kong turns a shophouse unit into an old Hong Kong film set, incorporating remnants from destroyed sets and a video work that draws connections to media tropes and his own family history. Inspired by the career of his grandfather, Eddie Wang, a prolific composer for over 300 films including Shaw Brothers productions, the installation explores cultural lineage and the enduring impact of Hong Kong’s golden age of cinema, while reflecting on how stories meant to entertain can also shape the way we remember and belong. In another shophouse, Joo Choon Lin’s (Singapore) installation The laugh laughs at the laugh, The song sings at the song examines how small actions produce change. A built-in maintenance cycle keeps the work in motion, with subtle activations sustaining renewal and transformation. Drawing on seed and fruit forms, it unfolds in open-ended variations and invites visitors to observe the rhythms and cycles of life.

Over at Blenheim Court, a colonial-era residence with three floors is transformed into a lively nexus of global artistic voices, probing how humans live with histories, ecologies, and traditions. The venue presents a dynamic range of video works by artists including Rizki Lazuardi (Indonesia), field-0 (China/United Kingdom), and Allora & Calzadilla (Puerto Rico). Among these, Jesse Jones’s (Ireland) The White Cave extends Jones’s longstanding practice of recovering overlooked or erased female figures through film, ritual, and performance. Using the oyster as motif, the work articulates a feminist mythology in which prehistory, geology and the sea intersect. Similarly, ikkibawiKrrr’s (South Korea) Seaweed Story spotlights the sea women divers of Jeju Island through a video work, paired with seaweed sculptures made in collaboration with local harvesters, drawing attention to this dwindling community and its disappearing traditions.

Within the heart of Singapore’s Civic District, SB2025 activates monuments and spaces with artworks that facilitate new encounters, inviting audiences to further understand histories and personal stories. Fort Canning Park has been a royal seat, colonial stronghold, and site of Singapore’s first experimental and botanical garden. Now a public park, the site-responsive artworks respond to these histories, while sharing stories of individual and collective resilience. For instance, at the Raffles House Lawn, Ayesha Singh’s (India) Continuous Coexistences (Singapore) is a larger-than-life outdoor sculpture that transforms an architectural line drawing into a physical installation. Viewed from different angles, the outlines of iconic structures emerge and collapse against the surrounding skyline, prompting audiences to reconsider how our built environment evolves.

Inside Fort Gate, HNZF IV by Jacqueline Kiyomi Gork (USA) combines sculptural form with an enveloping sound experience. As audiences enter and pass through, a fountain made from military aerospace scrap emits the soothing sound of water, which is systematically amplified and transformed into a cacophonic noise, exploring contrasts between peace and violence—reminding us that intention carries tensions and contradictions that invite rethinking. Nearby, Flowers for Africa: Rwanda by Kapwani Kiwanga (Canada/France), a triumphal arch installation, is juxtaposed with the historic masonry of the Fort Gate, demonstrating a quiet conversation between two markers of national identity. Draped in eucalyptus that progressively wilts, the installation gently invites audiences to reflect on the impermanence of memory and the histories that linger or fade over time.

At Fort Canning Park, lololol (Taiwan) presents an installation that draws inspiration from the lighthouse, exploring the poetics and politics of wayfinding in an evolving technological landscape. Audiences of Light Keeper follow a GPS-enabled sound walk through Fort Canning Park, immersing themselves in a narrative shaped by the artist’s encounters with lighthouses, their keepers and crypto-linguists. These sonic vignettes evoke reflection through memory, instinct, and curiosity. As dusk falls, the lighthouse comes alive with a shimmering light installation, the swirling motion of the light speaking to the history of wayfinding, and our constant quest to find our own ways into the future. Complemented by a video installation at Fort Canning Centre, the works collectively extend the site’s history of maritime navigation and message encryption by transforming the park into a journey of discovery and exploration.

Within National Gallery Singapore, Earth Play by Seung-taek Lee (South Korea), a seven-metre PVC balloon painted as Earth, transforms the third floor of the Supreme Court Foyer into a contemplative space, inviting audiences to see the planet from multiple viewpoints.

Amid the gleaming façades and constant rush of Singapore’s shopping belt, malls here have long been more than retail spaces, they are gathering points for diverse communities and repositories of shared memories. This Biennale, Lucky Plaza and Far East Shopping Centre are reimagined as spaces where music, technology, and imagination reside in unexpected ways. At Lucky Plaza, Eisa Jocson (the Philippines) presents an installation titled The Filipino Superwoman X H.O.M.E. Karaoke Living Room, which transforms a shop unit into a space reminiscent of a Filipino living room. Created with Filipino domestic workers, it invites the public to sing along to new karaoke videos—celebrating resilience, humour, and collectiveness. Within another mall unit, Tan Pin Pin (Singapore) reconstitutes two important scenes from her films to examine the nation’s temporal fabric. The dual-sided presentation shows, on one face, footage of the late Inuka, Singapore’s first polar bear born in captivity, swimming in cyclical loops within an artificial Arctic habitat, highlighting a paradox between the biological and the engineered. On the other, 80km/h, a work updated annually by Tan, uses fixed-pace dashcam footage to map the city’s relentless recalibration for efficiency. The installation brings into view dissonant rhythms of captivity and speed, and of the biological and the bureaucratic, that shape contemporary Singapore.

Nearby, and on the same stretch of Orchard Road at Far East Shopping Centre, Yuri Pattison (Ireland/France) presents entropy study. The work brings together architectural scale models originally created for projects in China, sourced from second-hand marketplaces following the onset of the ongoing real estate crisis. It is accompanied by a real-time animation of an open sky titled cloud gazing (americium). The shifting cloud formations, reminiscent of an ancient method of divination via clouds, are generated through a quantum random number generator, inviting audiences to reflect on financial speculation and climate projection with the longstanding human desire to predict the future. At 20 Anderson Road, the Biennale transforms the former Raffles Girls’ School campus into a lively playground of artistic discovery. Known for its progressive curriculum, the former campus now hosts artist projects that connect scientific, historical, spiritual and embodied knowledge and explores how these diverse forms of knowledge are produced and shared across generations.

The former school hall displays large-scale paintings by Kei Imazu (Japan/Indonesia) that layer myth, colonial maps, imagery of classical paintings and archival images. Alongside the paintings, a film installation by Young-jun Tak (South Korea/Germany) explores how skills and knowledge are passed between generations, weaving together the deliberate movements of woodcarvers with the collaborative choreography of dancers. In the Theatre Workshop and AVA room, Diakron & Emil Rønn Andersen (Denmark) and Riar Rizaldi (Indonesia) present immersive video and film works. Connecting individual gestures to collective remembrance, Angelica Mesiti’s (Australia/France) video in the PE Staff Room engages in a mimicry of nature made possible only through deep listening and synchronised movement. Özgür Kar’s (Türkiye/the Netherlands) sculptural video installation of skeleton animations fills the band room, their woodwind performances offering a subtle nod to the space’s musical past, while the Angklung Room features new works by Brandon Tay (Singapore/China), including Serpent Vessel and Votive Spiral, a pair of sculptures that explore the interplay of science and spirituality by incorporating biomechanical elements. Beyond the buildings, curatorial contributor Hothouse (Singapore) presents PRIMAL INSTINCT on the school field, with sculptural installations by Salad Dressing, Tini Aliman, and Elizabeth Gabrielle Lee, extending the Biennale’s presence outdoors.

From the reception foyer to the exhibition gallery, café, and the spaces just outside, SAM at Tanjong Pagar Distripark offers a vantage point to engage with the complex interplay of history, technology, memory, and daily life. At the museum entrance, CAMP’s (India) Metabolic Container imagines a 20-foot shipping container as a working image of trade. Built from 400 boxes of everyday goods moving weekly from Batam to Singapore, the installation reads like a ship’s hold of stacked parcels and shifting inventories. Sambals, crackers, perfume, and unknown items sit side by side, linking maritime logistics to bodies, habits, and everyday consumption. Crossing the threshold, SAM’s reception foyer comes alive, where Paul Chan’s (Hong Kong/USA) Khara En Tria (Joyer in 3) greets audiences with a mesmerising choreography of three brightly coloured nylon figures powered by electric fans, that inflate and sway in distinct rhythms. Drawing on Greek philosophical ideas of spirit, it adapts the classical figure of the bather, a common trope in Western art history, to reflect shifting notions of the body, changing ideas of pleasure, and one’s relationship to nature.

SAM’s sprawling Gallery 1 brings together selections from Singapore’s National Collection and contemporary contributions, where scenes of disaster sit alongside images of progress to reflect cycles of making and unmaking that challenges simple, linear ideas of progress. Many of the artworks point to absence—whether physical, psychological, or spiritual—reimagining the void as a space where memory and desire take root. Pierre Huyghe (France/Chile) activates the gallery with multimedia installation Offspring, where an AI programme orchestrates light, smoke, and sound elements to respond to environmental shifts and visitor movement, generating a constantly changing experience. Álvaro Urbano (Spain/Germany/France) populates the space with sculptural plants that echo living specimens, their metallic forms revealed through shifting light and shadow, evoking the layered histories of plantation agriculture and orchid diplomacy.

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Cui Jie (China) presents a new painting, Thermal Landscapes, which explores the nuanced connections between architectural functions and utopian aspirations, inspired by Singapore’s watchtowers, once hallmarks of a modernist landscape. Ju Young Kim (South Korea/Germany) merges high-tech aircraft components with Art Nouveau elements made of glass, ceramic, and metal in her Aeroplastics series, producing novel objects that explore desire and displacement in the context of travel. From the National Collection, Ming Wong’s (Singapore/Germany) Filem-Filem-Filem is a series of digital photographs in polaroid form, documenting remnants of old cinema architecture across Singapore and Malaysia, capturing the faded beauty of disappearing theatres and evoking nostalgia for a bygone era of film.

The Biennale activates audiences’ senses differently at the museum’s café, SIP at SAM, where RRD (Red de Reproducción y Distribución) (Mexico) presents Gastrogeography: Stories from Mexico to Singapore. Reconfiguring cookbooks, magazines, street-food packaging, advertisements, and printed materials found at Mexican roadside kiosks, RRD explores these everyday expressions of visual culture while presenting unexpected connections between Singaporean and Mexican culinary cultures. Paired with paintings, artisanal plates, murals, sculptures and tablecloths, visitors are drawn into parallel histories of Singapore, Mexico, and trans-global networks that are intimately tied through food.

Spread across different venues, these multi-location projects offer visitors explorations of art through taste, sight, and interaction. Huang Po-Chih’s (Taiwan) Momocha is part of the artist’s ongoing social experimental project that integrates artworld resources into real-world agricultural produces. Developed in collaboration with Singaporean brand Moon Juice Kombucha, Momocha presents a series of kombucha flavours brewed with spice, herb, and other economic crops sourced from the artist’s hometown of Xinpu, Hsinchu, Taiwan. Each flavour embodies cultural hybridity and the entanglement of agriculture, migration, and memory. They will be available through vending machines at National Gallery Singapore, Blenheim Court, 20 Anderson Road and over the counter at SIP at SAM.

Debbie Ding’s (Singapore) Rules for the Expression of Architectural Desires transforms MRT stations at Fort Canning, Harbourfront, and Orchard with posters, prompting commuters to consider the ideas and emotions that shape urban life. It frames the city as a space built from collective imagination as much as from concrete and glass, inviting us to reconsider the rules that define its future. Izat Arif (Malaysia) installs terrazzo benches inscribed with text in Malay and English across various Biennale sites including Blenheim Court, Tanglin Halt, Far East Shopping Centre, Fort Canning Centre, National Gallery Singapore and SAM, serving as both public seating and sculpture while inviting reflections prompted by their messages.

SB2025 opens this weekend with a vibrant lineup of experiences designed to foster connection and conversations. Blending lively experiences with artist-led initiatives, these programmes elevate the SB2025 experience, inviting visitors to engage more deeply with the artists and the ideas behind their works. More details can be found in Annex C: SB2025 Opening Week Programmes Schedule. At SAM’s Engine Room, visitors can look forward to insightful artist talks by Ahmet Öğüt, (Türkiye/the Netherlands), The Packet (Sri Lanka), Fiona Amundsen (New Zealand), Gabriela Golder (Argentina) and RRD (Red de Reproducción y Distribución) (Mexico), as well as a hands-on workshop by RRD that will introduce participants to the mimeograph, a portable and versatile printing machine—exploring its history, genealogy, and contemporary uses. Beyond SAM, other city spaces are activated: Hothouse (Singapore) presents a performance activation featuring Tini Aliman and Elizabeth Gabrielle Lee’s works at 20 Anderson Road.

Mr Low Eng Teong, Chief Executive Officer, National Arts Council, said, “Now in its eighth edition, the Singapore Biennale has been an important platform for creative collaborations and meaningful dialogue among practitioners, the wider arts community, and audiences. With our public spaces at the heart of this year’s work, Singapore transforms into a canvas for the arts as everyday places bring forth new encounters and moments for reflection. We hope that Singaporeans and visitors alike will continue to engage with and be part of our city’s evolving identity through these shared art experiences.”

The Biennale runs from 31st October 2025 to 29th March 2026. Admission to SAM at Tanjong Pagar Distripark is ticketed at SGD15 for Singaporeans and Permanent Residents, and SGD25 for tourists and foreign residents. Local and locally-based students and educators enjoy free admission. All other Biennale venues are free and open to all. Singaporeans may also use their SG Culture Pass credits to redeem admission. Complimentary shuttle buses will operate on weekends, connecting key Biennale sites for visitors to explore the different venues across the city. More information, including full list of artists, artworks and programmes, is available at www.singaporebiennale.org.