At a time when contemporary art can often feel loud, oversized and eager to announce itself, PULSE 2 takes a quieter approach. The second edition of Haridas Contemporary’s biennial group exhibition brings together seven artists whose practices unfold through observation, material, memory and the small details of everyday life.

Running from 12 September to 11 October 2026 at Tanjong Pagar Distripark, the exhibition features new paintings, installations and found-object sculptures by Aiman, Cynthia Delaney Suwito, Dana Lam, Farizwan Fajari, Genevieve Leong, Joey Leung and Suliswanto Urubingwaru. Together, their works offer seven distinct ways of looking at the world, shaped by personal histories, cultural environments and very different relationships with materials.

Rather than attempting to define a single regional aesthetic, PULSE 2 is interested in what happens when individual practices are allowed to sit alongside one another. The artists range from emerging voices to more established practitioners, with approaches that move between painting, sculpture, installation, writing, performance and sound.

For Haridas Contemporary, the exhibition is also part of a longer commitment to artists whose practices may be understated but have the potential to develop distinctive voices within contemporary visual culture. Selected participants will go on to feature in the gallery’s 2027 and 2028 programming.

Singaporean artist Aiman approaches his practice through the idea of embodiment — the way our understanding of ourselves develops through our relationship with the environments and communities around us. Working across exhibitions and art fairs in Singapore and internationally, his materially grounded works explore how individual experience intersects with collective memory.

His work has been shown in Indonesia, Spain, the United States and the United Kingdom, with recent presentations including Art Jakarta and a showing in Barcelona in 2025. His practice has also been recognised through awards including the Stanton Archer Prize, Homiens Art Prize, Georgette Chen Scholarship and Winston Oh Travel Award.

At PULSE 2, his #837a6b (2025) is an oil-on-linen work measuring 95 by 168cm — one of several paintings in the exhibition that invite viewers to slow down and consider how seemingly familiar forms can carry layers of meaning.

For Cynthia Delaney Suwito, the everyday becomes a place for playful disruption. The Indonesian-born, Singapore-based artist is known for bending ordinary routines and objects until they become strange, humorous and unexpectedly laborious. Her practice spans sculpture, installation and digital media, often finding absurdity in things most people barely notice.

Her 2016 video Knitting Noodle, in which she knitted instant noodles, was featured by BBC Asia in 2017. Other works have turned their attention to plastic bags, clothes pegs and toilet paper rolls, transforming mundane objects into unlikely subjects of artistic enquiry.

Her contribution to PULSE 2, Potted Tower 4–8, Potted Pots 21–23 (2026), continues that fascination with the familiar. Made from plastic pots, digital prints, acrylic paint, polyurethane foam, wire, floral tape, plywood and PVC, the work combines disparate materials into a sculptural arrangement that feels at once recognisable and wonderfully impractical.

At the other end of the spectrum is Dana Lam, whose multidisciplinary practice encompasses writing, drawing and performance. Lam has spent decades moving between the arts, journalism and social activism, bringing those different perspectives into her creative work. A founding member of TheatreWorks (S) Ltd, now T:>Works, Lam has also worked as a reporter for The Straits Times and served as President of AWARE from 2000–2002 and again from 2009–2011. In 2009, she was part of the core group involved in reclaiming AWARE.

Her recent work has continued to examine personal experience, identity and the passage of time. In 2024, her visual journal The Art of Being a Grandmother: An Incomplete Diary of Becoming was nominated for the Singapore Literature Prize, while she also received Silver in the Established Artist Category at the 43rd UOB Painting of the Year competition. For PULSE 2, Lam presents Mynah Visitation (2026), an oil-on-linen work that brings the artist’s observational sensibility into the gallery.

Farizwan Fajari, also known as Speak Cryptic, has similarly developed a recognisable visual language from his observations of the world around him. Inspired by alternative subcultures including punk and skateboarding, his work uses recurring characters and personal iconographies to explore the human condition and respond to current affairs.

His practice has taken him to exhibitions including the Kuala Lumpur Biennale, Koganecho Art Bazaar in Yokohama and Secret Archipelago in Paris, while he was also commissioned for the 2013 Singapore Art Biennale.

Music has long been another part of his creative life. Farizwan has performed and composed with bands including Sugarflies, Dyfectra, Fishtank, Marchtwelve, Concave Scream and I Am David Sparkle, and more recently has created musical and soundscape compositions under the name Primary Motif.

Since 2023, his visual practice has entered a new phase, translating personal history and experiences that have been witnessed, felt and reconciled into organic and angular forms. Public Witness 17 (2026), an acrylic and oil-on-canvas work, forms part of that ongoing visual investigation.

For Genevieve Leong, the starting point is often something that cannot be easily seen at all. The Singaporean artist’s practice attempts to visualise the intangible, combining text, image, found and made objects and spatial manipulation to create what she describes as “an almost physical image”. Her installations often retain a sense of impermanence, allowing for change through audience participation or environmental conditions.

Having completed her MA in Contemporary Art Practice at the Royal College of Art in London, Leong was based in Switzerland from 2019 to 2023 before returning to Singapore. Her work is rooted in the tension between what can be physically encountered and what can only be felt, remembered or imagined.

Her Tessallations works, including Tessallations I (2026), use found and made objects to explore this space between the tangible and intangible. Measuring 15 by 25 by 32cm, the work becomes part sculpture, part image and part proposition — asking viewers to consider how physical things can carry less tangible sensations and associations.

Joey Leung, meanwhile, is interested in the opposite impulse: slowing down. The Singapore-based artist’s practice responds to overlooked rhythms in everyday spaces, creating moments that encourage viewers to pause. Design sensibilities inform her attention to surface and spatial relationships, while her interest in deliberate deceleration becomes a way of making room for simplicity and stillness.

A 2025 graduate of LASALLE College of the Arts in partnership with Goldsmiths, University of London, Leung has shown her work at Hopsfield Art and was selected for Art in Transit at Rochor MRT. Her The Mountain is Late II (2026), made from acrylic and thread on polyester, reflects that interest in surface, rhythm and quiet observation.

The final artist in PULSE 2, Suliswanto Urubingwaru, works across visual art, literature and research, often using fiction and interpretation to explore history, myth and identity.

The Indonesian artist, who is commonly known as Urubingwaru, moves between drawing, painting, installation and interactive installation. His practice is particularly interested in narratology — the ways stories are constructed, interpreted and passed between people.

A Fine Arts graduate of ISI Yogyakarta, he presented his solo exhibition As I Lay with My Head in Your Lap, Camerado at ch+ch in Seoul in 2026. He has also exhibited across Indonesia, Singapore and the United States. His contribution to PULSE 2, Samaritan Girl (2026), is an oil-on-canvas work that sits within this broader interest in the relationship between image, narrative and interpretation.

What makes PULSE 2 interesting is not simply the range of practices on display, but the way the exhibition reflects Haridas Contemporary’s broader role within Singapore’s evolving art scene. Founded by Christiaan Haridas, the gallery was established with the aim of supporting Singapore and Singapore-based artists while maintaining a regional programme. With 18 years of experience in the Southeast Asian art market, Haridas has positioned the gallery as a space for emerging and mid-career artists to develop through exhibitions, dialogue and professional guidance.

That makes PULSE more than a once-every-two-years group show. It functions as a kind of pulse check, a chance to see what different artists are thinking about, experimenting with and quietly developing before those practices become more widely known. For visitors, that also makes the exhibition an invitation to look without too many preconceptions.

There are no single themes that neatly contain these seven artists, and perhaps that is the point. One work may begin with a familiar domestic object, another with memory, another with a personal mythology or an intangible sensation. Together, they create a portrait of contemporary practice that is less about making a definitive statement and more about paying attention to the many ways artists make sense of the world.

Photo Credit: Haridas Contemporary

PULSE 2 runs from 12th September to 11th October 2026 at Haridas Contemporary, Tanjong Pagar Distripark. The gallery is open Thursday to Saturday from noon to 7pm and Sunday from noon to 5pm, with Wednesday visits available by appointment. More information available here