At National Gallery Singapore, its latest exhibition, Passion is Volcanic, announces itself with a sense of anticipation the moment the tour begins, not as a quiet, contemplative walkthrough, but as something far more alive. Even before the artworks begin, the tone is set: there’s a heightened awareness that this is a space with boundaries, with its unprecedented R18 rating, and strict rules of no photography or videography, conditions that feel less like restrictions and more like a deliberate framing of the experience; rather than experiencing the work through your camera lens, instead you are meant to be here, fully present, encountering the works without distraction.

Dr Patrick Flores, Chief Curator and Project Director of the exhibition, says, “Art and desire have always been intertwined, yet conversations about pleasure and the body remain shielded in the region’s public sphere. Passion is Volcanic: Desire in Southeast Asian Art engages with these themes in a considered and meaningful way and demonstrates how complex subjects can be approached with intellectual rigour and curatorial care. This exhibition invites us to look beyond familiar or simplified ideas of the erotic, exploring how desire is not fixed, but shaped by culture, history, and power. It opens up a more layered understanding of Southeast Asian art, one that centres lived, embodied experience as a vital force in artistic practice.”

And as co-curator Dr Adele Tan puts it, “this show is meant for looking, then looking again. Spending time and coming back.” It’s an invitation, and almost a challenge, to slow down and stay with what you see.

That sense of immersion is inseparable from the exhibition’s ambition. Passion is Volcanic is not a cautious survey; it is, in Dr Tan’s words, “a comprehensive, almost encyclopaedic exhibition, though the space doesn’t allow us to fully do that.” What it does instead is dig deeply into Southeast Asia, anchoring itself in the strength of the collection while stretching across cultures, histories, and belief systems. “

We intended to ground ourselves in a region where we know the strength of the collection,” she explains, “because this show really digs into our collection.” The result is something expansive yet rooted, where Chinese works, regional loans, and rarely seen pieces all cohere within a distinctly Southeast Asian frame.

And yet, for all its breadth, the exhibition is not trying to pin desire down into a single definition. As co-curator Dr Kathleen Ditzig makes clear, “desire is culturally and historically specific, it relates to relationships of power. So yes, there’s diversity. But it’s also inherently human.” That tension between difference and universality animates the entire show. Rather than resolving it, the curators lean into it, creating what Ditzig describes as “space for that to be present, to trust sensorial responses, the act of looking and being curious.” In a world that moves so quickly that we rarely have time and space for that kind of sustained attention, she notes, “one difficulty is actually creating permission for that kind of presence, and I’m personally proud that we can hold that space, because there are very few spaces in society that allow it.”

The exhibition title, “Passion is Volcanic”, draws inspiration from Nanyang artist Liu Kang’s 1953 essay Trip to Bali, in which he observed that erotic forms of desire could act as creative forces for questioning and change. Building on this idea, the exhibition approaches the erotic as a lived, felt experience that shapes how we think, know, and relate to others. Bringing together both canonical and lesser-known works, the exhibition re-examines how desire and the body have been represented across Southeast Asian art, revealing not only continuities and transformations over time, but also alternative perspectives that challenge dominant narratives of art history.

Walking through the galleries, that permission feels palpable. Spanning painting, sculptural installation, photography, and video, the exhibition brings together a diverse range of artists and practices, examined through the lens of the erotic, with focused spotlights on key figures and movements. It invites visitors to reflect on how representations of the body and desire shape not only artistic practices, but also how we understand identity, intimacy, and the spaces we inhabit.

The first section, Asian Mythos and Ritual, contains and activates historical objects, drawing you into a worldview where desire and the sacred are inseparable. Here, the erotic is not framed as something private or taboo, but as a vital force that has long shaped how the body connects to nature, the cosmos, and the divine across Asia. A rare 14th-15th century Tibetan Buddhist sculpture of Vajradhara and Prajnaparamita becomes a powerful entry point: rendered in gilt copper, the two figures are locked not just in embrace but in a tender kiss. Vajradhara, representing the highest state of enlightenment, and Prajnaparamita, the embodiment of wisdom, merge in a moment that visualises a core Tantric principle—the union of compassion and wisdom as a path to cosmic perfection. It is an image that collapses any easy separation between spirituality and sensuality, insisting instead that desire itself can be a form of spiritual knowledge.

That same current flows through Agnes Arellano’s Haliya Bathing (1983), which pulses with an almost gravitational energy. Reimagining the Bicolano moon goddess through her own body, Arellano casts herself in a childbirth position, surrounded by concentric rings of crushed marble that seem to radiate outward like ripples in water, or planetary orbits. The work feels expansive, as if it is stretching beyond the gallery walls, tying the body to cycles of fertility, creation, and cosmic movement. It is at once deeply personal and mythic, grounding divine femininity in lived, embodied experience. Nearby, Nguyễn Quân’s Altar (1992) shifts the tone into something more meditative yet no less charged. Through ink painting and flanking figurative elements, he reimagines the Vietnamese altar as a space where sensuality and spirituality quietly intertwine, suggesting the female form through abstraction rather than direct depiction.

What emerges across these works is a sense that the body is never neutral. It is a conduit, a meeting point, a site where multiple forces, from the divine to the natural, to the emotional, all converge. Even in more intimate works like Long Thien Shih’s Hand, Foot and Hair (1971), desire is understood as something activated through touch, through the circulation of energy within the body itself. Across the section, these gestures accumulate into something larger: a vision of desire that moves fluidly between the sacred and the corporeal, shaping how life, death, and renewal are understood. It’s not just that these objects represent belief systems—they seem to carry them, inviting you to feel, however briefly, what it means to inhabit a world where the body is inseparable from the cosmos.

As the exhibition unfolds, that initial intensity mutates, thickens, and takes on new forms. In Conventions of the Erotic, desire is no longer anchored primarily in myth or ritual, but wrestled with in the studio, through material, gesture, and the very act of making. Here, artists begin to dismantle inherited ways of seeing the body, pushing beyond academic traditions of the nude toward something far more unstable, tactile, and alive. As one moves through the space, it becomes clear that this is not a linear history but an unfolding field of experiments, moments where the body slips between abstraction and figuration, between symbol and sensation.

This shift is already prefigured in Liu Kang’s Scene in Bali (1953), where the nude is released from the confines of the studio and placed into the open air. Bathing figures dissolve into the rhythms of the landscape, their bodies inseparable from the sensuous vitality of Bali itself. Desire here is not posed or staged, it is ambient, atmospheric, part of a larger ecology of light, water, and movement. It signals a broader turning point in Southeast Asian art, where the body becomes not just an object of study, but a living conduit for modernity, place, and feeling.

By the time one encounters Alfonso Ossorio’s Clouds of Conscience (1956), that sensuality has become almost overwhelming. The painting engulfs you. Its surface is dense, charged, refusing rest, paint accumulates into something like a living organism, a “densely active cell,” as the artist once described it. There is no distance here, no safe vantage point. Instead, the work presses itself upon you, insisting on a bodily encounter. As Ditzig reflects, “seeing works like this in space creates a different kind of experience. Growing up in Singapore, I didn’t see this kind of painting. Being able to work with it now is next level.” That sense of awe, of encountering something at once historical and startlingly immediate, runs like a current through the entire section.

Elsewhere, the body fractures, reappears, and disguises itself in unexpected forms. In Ahmad Zakii Anwar’s Sixtynine series (2000), eroticism becomes playful, even mischievous. Fruit, lush, aging, tactile, are arranged in precarious couplings, their surfaces bruised and ripened to the point of suggestion. What might first appear humorous quickly becomes disarming: desire is no longer idealised, but grounded in texture, decay, and the unmistakable physicality of the world. Nearby, Julie Lluch’s Lily for Georgia O’Keeffe (2009) magnifies the body into something monumental yet ambiguous. The terracotta bloom opens and folds in ways that are unmistakably sensual, while simultaneously confronting the viewer with the long shadow of the male gaze in art history. It is both homage and critique, reverence and refusal.

What emerges across these works is a sense of the studio as a charged site of negotiation—where artists test the limits of representation, where desire is pulled apart and reassembled through paint, clay, and form. It is not simply about depicting the erotic, but about asking what it means to feel it, to construct it, to see it anew. As Ditzig suggests elsewhere, the exhibition ultimately invites viewers back into that act of looking itself, to “trust sensorial responses, the act of looking and being curious.” And in this section especially, that invitation feels almost electric: a call to encounter the body not as a fixed image, but as something in flux, restless, searching, and irreducibly alive.

The exhibition’s final movement, Public Arenas/Private Interiors, feels less like a conclusion and more like a rupture, where everything that has been building quietly suddenly spills outward into the social world. Desire is no longer held within myth, ritual, or even the contained space of the studio. It becomes public, contested, and entangled with the pressures of modern life: mass media, shifting gender politics, and the accelerating force of globalisation. What was once hidden or taboo begins to surface at the centre of cultural debate. As Ditzig puts it, “desire is culturally and historically specific, it relates to relationships of power. So yes, there’s diversity. But it’s also inherently human.” That tension, between regulation and instinct, between visibility and suppression pulses through this entire section.

Here, artists do not simply depict intimacy; they expose the systems that shape how it is seen, controlled, and understood. In Nguyen Thi Thanh Mai’s Out (2012), objects associated with clinical authority, gynaecological instruments, are transformed into something strangely beautiful, adorned with delicate glass beads. The gesture is disarming. Instruments designed to examine and regulate the female body are re-presented as objects of contemplation, even adornment. The work does not soften their history; instead, it sharpens it, forcing viewers to confront how the body has been medicalised, surveilled, and disciplined. In doing so, it turns discomfort into critique, reclaiming a space for agency and for the evolving realities of women’s lives across Asia.

Elsewhere, intimacy becomes less fixed, less easily grasped. In Lavender Chang’s Dissolving into the Same Breath series (2024), bodies blur into one another through long-exposure photography, their forms dissolving into luminous traces. What remains is not a clear image of two individuals, but a fleeting imprint of connection; something fragile, shifting, and deeply felt. Originally accompanied by personal narratives of couples reconnecting after periods of separation, the work extends beyond the visual, opening into conversations about absence, longing, and the changing textures of intimacy in contemporary life. It is less about what desire looks like, and more about how it moves, and how it lingers, fades, and reforms.

Across the section, feminist practices and queer perspectives push insistently against older modes of representation. The body is no longer a passive subject to be viewed; it asserts itself, speaks back, and resists easy categorisation. Private pleasure, once marginalised or silenced, becomes something to be claimed, articulated, and shared. At the same time, the exhibition remains attentive to its context. As Adele Tan reflects, “we have aimed to create a very respectful and culturally grounded space for visitors to engage with these ideas, to demonstrate talking about these subjects with both intellectual rigour and cultural care.” That balance between openness and restraint, between provocation and responsibility gives the section its particular charge.

What emerges is not a single narrative, but a dense, overlapping field of voices. Singapore and the region are not presented as monolithic, but as sites of ongoing negotiation—where different identities, desires, and experiences come into visibility in uneven, sometimes uneasy ways. And perhaps that is what makes this final section so striking: it does not resolve the questions the exhibition raises. Instead, it leaves them open, alive, and in motion, carried forward into the viewer’s own body, their own gaze, their own sense of what it means to see, to feel, and to desire in public.

For Tan, the process of selecting these works was guided less by theory than by instinct and attraction. “It wasn’t about difficulty, it was about having so much to choose from,” she reflects. “I went with works that made me stop and look multiple times, because I enjoyed looking at them.” That emphasis on repeated looking becomes a curatorial principle. The exhibition is carefully staged to heighten bodily engagement: works are placed lower, closer; lighting shifts gradually from dark to bright, “playing with emotions, just like artists do”; even the flooring is considered as part of the experience. As Ditzig describes it, “it’s a kind of protective skin,” while Tan adds that it “hugs you differently,” extending the space and subtly shaping how you move through it.

Beneath this sensorial richness lies a sharper, more complex inquiry into power. The exhibition’s reference to “soft pleasures and hard politics” is not incidental. Desire, as Tan notes, cannot simply be contained: “from a psychoanalytic perspective, there’s no law in the unconscious. Desire will always find a way to meet its object, even when power tries to suppress it.” This is why, she argues, “it’s better to talk about these things than to clamp them down. Nothing improves by pretending something doesn’t exist: you can’t wish a problem away.” The works in the exhibition echo this insistence, revealing how desire persists, mutates, and resurfaces across different contexts, even, as Ditzig points out, in artists like Peter Lau, whose earlier explorations of eroticism were later overshadowed by more commercial practices.

And yet, the exhibition resists turning provocation into spectacle. “We always want to get people excited, regardless,” Tan says, acknowledging the charged nature of the subject matter. But she is equally clear that transgression is not the goal: “we also don’t want restrictions to become the focus. Instead, we want people to value what is good and beautiful in the works.” The excitement, then, comes not from shock alone but from the depth and diversity of what is on display, from the chance to encounter difference and to “take time to be with that difference.”

What ultimately makes Passion is Volcanic so compelling is the way it holds all these elements together: intensity and restraint, research and instinct, politics and pleasure. This balance is mirrored in the collaboration between its two curators. Ditzig describes entering the project with hesitation: “I was honestly quite scared to join”, but also with deep respect, and found in the process “another way of looking, being with the artwork, not just theorising it.” Tan, in turn, credits Ditzig with bringing “depth, knowledge, and a different dimension that elevated the exhibition.” Their dialogue, evident throughout the exhibition, becomes part of the exhibition’s texture, a reminder that meaning here is not fixed but constantly negotiated.

By the end, Passion is Volcanic doesn’t just conclude, but settles into you. What lingers is a heightened sensitivity: to your own body in space, to the slow pull of looking, to the quiet tension between what is shown and what is held back. That sense of restraint, so carefully calibrated throughout the exhibition, reveals itself as one of its greatest strengths. As Tan reflects, “showing restraint can actually be more powerful than having no limits at all.” And you feel that power everywhere: in what is suggested rather than declared, in how the works refuse to overwhelm, choosing instead to draw you closer, to make you stay.

It’s there in the lighting, too, the way it shifts almost imperceptibly as you move, from darker, more introspective spaces into moments of clarity. Nothing feels rushed. The exhibition doesn’t push you forward; it holds you, gently but insistently, asking you to slow down, to adjust your pace, to really look. Even in a show marked as R18, one that has prompted raised eyebrows across the region, even the incredulous question asked by galleries the Gallery loaned items from: “you’re doing this in Singapore, what took you so long?”, there is no sense of provocation for its own sake. Instead, there is care, control, and a quiet confidence in the works themselves.

That intimacy deepens in the final encounters. Standing before Peter Lau’s Door to Temptation, it becomes clear how much the exhibition trusts its audience. The work does not explain itself outright; it invites you in, asks you to read, to linger, to form your own relationship with it. Meaning unfolds slowly, personally. You don’t just see the artwork, you begin to locate yourself within it.

And then, just when it seems to end, the exhibition opens again. In Pinaree Sanpitak’s Noon-nom, you are invited to step inside. Shoes off, body lowered, you enter a field of soft, breast-like forms. The space is gentle, almost disarming. It holds you differently. Here, the exhibition releases you from the act of looking and returns you to something more instinctive: rest, touch, conversation. The work draws together everything the exhibition has been circling, desire as both sensual and sacred, the body as a site of comfort as much as intensity, and transforms it into an experience you can physically inhabit.

So it is here that we leave with a sensation of having been slowed down, tuned in, made more aware. Of having moved through something that asks not to be consumed in a single pass, but returned to, felt through again. Passion is Volcanic is an exhibition you feel in the body, as it quietly reshapes how you look, how you feel, and how you understand the space between them.

Photo Credit: National Gallery Singapore

Passion is Volcanic: Desire in Southeast Asian Art runs from 24th April to 30th August 2026 at National Gallery Singapore. More information available here