VENICE, ITALY – For the Singapore Pavilion at the 61st International Art Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia, Amanda Heng Liang Ngim transforms the historic Sale d’Armi into a space for rest and observation. A Pause brings together photographs, video and an architectural intervention centred on ordinary actions such as sitting, waiting, and watching.
The work is a culmination of Heng’s four-decade practice, drawing on her sustained attention to the body, everyday gestures, and unscripted social encounter. The presentation reflects a shift from the charged immediacy of her early public performances to a quieter, more interior mode of attention.
The Singapore Pavilion has been reconfigured with larch wood – the same timber historically used for the Arsenale’s floorboards and Venice’s foundations, allowing the intervention to assimilate into the architecture. Stepped platforms ranging in width are angled to follow the building’s walls, rising through the space and ending at the windowsills, transforming windows into doorways. The dimensions invite viewers to assume varied postures of rest. The work extends Heng’s longstanding approach of creating conditions for encounter. Visitors can lean, sit, or lie down, deciding where to pause and how long to stay.
A Pause (2025-26) is a new dual-channel video developed through filming in both Venice and Singapore. The work follows people in moments of everyday activity: watering plants, preparing breakfast, walking or looking up at the sky. The video observes Heng herself in Singapore and Venetian residents in their homes and neighbourhoods. Filmed in real time with long, static shots and available light, the work observes how daily tasks themselves become forms of pause and renewal, acts through which people draw life and negotiate stillness within dense urban environments. The camera holds and follows the participants’ pace, allowing time to unfold. Rather than presenting recognisable cityscapes, the work attends to quiet corners and subtle gestures, finding commonality across both cities through the rhythms of ordinary existence.
Parts of My Body (1990, reprinted 2026) presents close-up photographs of Heng’s body: an elbow, the curve of a shoulder, the deep of a back, the hollow of a clavicle. Direct and unadorned, the images isolate fragments, transforming the body into landscape. First made in 1990 when the artist was in her thirties, the photographs have been reprinted at a larger scale for this presentation and lean against the pavilion walls. The series reflects Heng’s long-standing investigation into how the body carries identity, memory, and time—a thread that runs through her work from the late 1980s to the present.
Alongside this exhibition is a publication titled Amanda Heng: On and On, the first comprehensive monograph on Amanda Heng Liang Ngim’s art and practice. It reveals the full range of her visual experiments over nearly forty years: from early drawings and performance documentation to photographic studies and video work. Conceived and produced by Sydney based publisher Stolon Press and pavilion curator Selene Yap, and co-published with the Singapore Art Museum, the book holds the complexity of a practice built from small actions and sustained attention, offering a counterpoint and a backdrop to a pavilion of quietness and lightly held intervention. Essays by architectural theorist Lilian Chee, writer and critic Lee Weng Choy, curator Anca Rujoiu, anthropologist Souchou Yao, and Yap each open different aspects of Heng’s practice of living and working in Singapore.
Artist Amanda Heng Liang Ngim said, “A Pause transforms the Pavilion into a quiet and open space for a rest, inviting visitors to find their own way of slowing down, to spend time and be present. There are no rules or instructions. Each person moves freely through the space differently. And you may notice how the body carries itself feeling at ease and at peace, wondering what it means to pause.”
The Pavilion’s curator, Selene Yap, said, “Amanda Heng’s work grounds itself in the everyday—how we move, pause, and sustain ourselves through small gestures. This presentation shows that practice at full scale, transforming the pavilion into a space where visitors complete the work simply by being present.”
Eugene Tan, Co-Chair of the Commissioning Panel and Chief Executive Officer and Director of SAM, said: “Amanda Heng has been foundational to Singapore’s contemporary art landscape for nearly four decades. Presenting her work at Venice affirms our commitment to artists whose practices are built through sustained inquiry and deep engagement with local conditions. Her work, grounded in the gestures and rhythms of everyday life, has reshaped how we understand the relationship between art and the everyday, and it is meaningful to see this resonate on an international stage.”
Elaine Ng, Chief Executive Officer of the National Arts Council (NAC), Singapore, said: “A Pause resonates profoundly in today’s world, offering a reflective space amid increasing complexities. Amanda Heng’s work exemplifies the important role of the arts in fostering dialogue, empathy, and understanding within society. This presentation in Venice reflects NAC’s continued commitment to supporting our artists at international platforms for them to showcase their craft to a wider audience. Come January 2027, Singaporeans can also look forward to the return show and experience the work first hand.”
Commissioned by NAC, supported by the Ministry of Culture, Community and Youth, and organised by SAM, this year marks Singapore’s 12th participation at the International Art Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia.
Featured Image: Singapore Pavilion artist Amanda Heng Liang Ngim and curator Selene Yap. Image courtesy of Singapore Art Museum.
A Pause, the Singapore Pavilion, will be on display on the second floor of the Arsenale’s Sale d’Armi from 9th May to 22nd November 2026. The exhibition will move to Singapore in January 2027, where it will be reimagined for a second iteration at SAM at Tanjong Pagar Distripark. Follow the latest updates via Facebook, Instagram and TikTok (@singaporeartmuseum), or visit here
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