In Singapore, change is often framed as progress. New buildings rise, neighbourhoods shift, and familiar streets quietly become something else. But what happens to the memories, habits, and lives that once filled those spaces?

This January, OH! Open House returns with a new edition of its much-loved artwalk, and this time, it’s tucked away in a location most people have probably never noticed. OH! Moonstone Artwalk, themed ‘Everything Changes, Everything Stays the Same’ runs from 18 to 25 January 2026, inviting visitors into Moonstone Lane, a small residential enclave layered with stories of adaptation, persistence, and everyday resilience.

At first glance, Moonstone Lane doesn’t really announce itself. It’s not a heritage district or a cultural landmark. On paper, it’s simply residential. But spend time walking through it, and the contradictions begin to surface. Family homes sit beside shrines, small factories, and niche businesses. Domestic routines unfold alongside remnants of industry. It’s a neighbourhood shaped less by tidy zoning than by the people who have lived, worked, worshipped, and improvised within it.

This is where OH! Open House thrives — in the overlooked corners of the city where life simply continues. Rather than staging art in galleries, in OH! Open House’s signature style, OH! Moonstone unfolds across real, lived-in spaces, with five site-specific works by Singaporean and international artists embedded directly into the fabric of the estate. Visitors move through homes, workshops, collections, and open land, encountering art as part of everyday life rather than apart from it.

Featured artists include Ang Song Nian, Jarupatcha Achavasmit, Milenko Prvački and Robert Zhao Renhui. One stop brings visitors into a 1950s family home that has been occupied by the same family for more than 70 years. Here, photographic imagery and personal recollections blur the line between private memory and national history, reflecting on care, loss, and what it means to stay put while the city transforms around you.

Just down the lane, a working carpentry atelier continues its quiet rhythm of labour and repetition. Wood shavings, tools, and time itself become part of the artwork, offering a meditation on craft, persistence, and the slow accumulation of meaning, even as the surrounding environment shifts.

Other encounters move into deeply personal worlds shaped by devotion and obsession. Inside a densely packed toy shop filled with miniature cars, a contemporary intervention explores collecting as an act of care, a way of holding onto memory, tactility, and community in miniature form.

Outdoors, a large-scale installation spreads across a green patch within the estate, forming a changing landscape that mirrors how land in Singapore is constantly reshaped, reclassified, and repurposed, often faster than people can adjust to it. Along the way, visitors pass sites such as clan houses, temples, and long-standing buildings, not treated as static heritage monuments, but as living neighbours whose histories quietly inform the present.

For curator John Tung, the artwalk is less about nostalgia than awareness. “I hope the presentation encourages visitors to reflect more deeply about the spaces we inhabit. Across the Artwalk, the history of sites across Moonstone and encounters with the artworks offer reflections on how we inscribe these spaces with meaning through our activities and experiences. Cumulatively, it prompts us to how our recognition of places is simultaneously a recognition of ourselves,” 

That idea that cities are felt as much as they are built sits at the heart of OH! Moonstone. Executive Director Alan Oei puts it simply: Moonstone Lane matters precisely because it falls outside the official story of Singapore. “Moonstone is the kind of place most people pass without a second thought, and that’s precisely why it matters. Some places fall outside the official story of Singapore, and those are the ones OH! hopes to hold space for. Art allows us to surface what might otherwise fade, reminding us that a neighbourhood is shaped by people and memory, not zoning lines or whatever label it’s given. OH! Moonstone is a reminder that if we don’t look closer, we’ll lose places before we even realise what they meant,” he said.

OH! Moonstone isn’t about resisting change or romanticising the past. Instead, it holds space for the tension between transformation and continuity, showing how memories linger beneath new surfaces, and how ordinary places quietly carry the weight of lived experience.

By stepping into someone’s home, workplace, collection, or patch of land, visitors are invited to rethink what belonging really means in a constantly evolving city. Sometimes, the most compelling stories aren’t found in landmarks, but in the spaces we usually walk past without a second glance. Join OH! Moonstone Artwalk, and come explore the unseen. Slow down, and listen.

Photo Credit: Marvin Lee

OH! Moonstone Art Walk takes place at Moonstone Lane from 18th to 25th January 2026. Tickets available here