Exhibition till 17th August 2025

The Singapore Art Museum (SAM) is honored to present the inaugural major survey exhibition of mid-career Singaporean artist Heman Chong, entitled This is a dynamic list and may never be able to satisfy particular standards for completeness. Scheduled from 10 May to 17 August 2025, this exhibition will feature 51 works spanning from the early 2000s to the present, including six new commissions that will be revealed during the event. The exhibition aims to delineate Chong’s prolific conceptual practice while encouraging new interpretations of its significance and relevance in contemporary society. By transforming the anxieties and absurdities inherent in our information-saturated environment into engaging visual, textural, and material experiences, the exhibition articulates a compelling call to comprehend our daily realities and the intrinsic value of art in an increasingly digital age.

A key figure in Singapore’s art history, Chong epitomizes a generation of regional artists who attained international acclaim as contemporary artists at the turn of the century and the onset of our hyper-networked digital age. His multifaceted artistic practice defies simplistic categorization, fluidly transitioning among photography, installation, performance, and painting. Central to Chong’s dynamic practice is an inquiry into the infrastructures that underpin our complex realities, which he examines by engaging with and synthesizing information from the mundane experiences of everyday contemporary life. This distinctive balance of conceptual rigor and relatable explorations has elevated Chong’s reputation within the global art arena.

The title of the exhibition distinctly communicates its purpose, serving both as an artwork within the exhibition and as a conscious appropriation of Wikipedia’s terms and conditions, reflecting the ever-evolving nature of its online listings. Instead of striving for a definitive and exhaustive account of Chong’s extensive oeuvre, the exhibition reevaluates Chong’s seminal works within the context of our hyper-mediated contemporary landscape. Self-referential in multiple dimensions, it highlights a significant strategy in Chong’s practice: to interrogate the validity of appropriation in an era where information is perpetually rewritten and imbued with new meanings. Curated by the artist, the exhibition unfolds across nine thematic rooms, each organized around key terms: Words, Whispers, Ghosts, Journeys, Futures, Findings, Infrastructures, Surfaces, and Endings. Through these rooms, viewers are welcomed into Chong’s critical and emotional examination of objects, situations, logics, and affinities, which articulate the human condition in the 21st century.

June Yap, Director of Curatorial and Research at SAM and co-curator of the exhibition, says, “Heman Chong’s relationship with SAM is remarkably long-standing, having been featured in early regional exhibitions by the museum such as City/Community – Nokia Singapore Art (1999), the Singapore Biennale, to recent commissions in 2020 and the present extensive survey in 2025. As such, this exhibition is as much a representation of his prolific body of work over time as it is a charting of the museum and Singapore’s contemporary artistic developments. We look forward to sharing Chong’s witty practice and serious humour with our audiences, and igniting meaningful conversations about art and how we live in this digital age.”

Expanding on Chong’s practice, Kathleen Ditzig, co-curator of the exhibition and Curator at National Gallery Singapore, adds, “A critical characteristic of Heman Chong’s conceptualism is its multifaceted and organically reconstituting process of relations as it adapts to forms of organisation, governance and networks—a logic that is definitive of Singapore Contemporary Art.” 

Introducing new six commissioned works

The exhibition survey gently unveils a series of six newly commissioned works, inviting you on an insightful journey through Chong’s evolving artistic practice. Among these heartfelt creations is Wanderlust / Rebecca Solnit (2025), a touching addition to his Cover (Versions) series, where Chong lovingly paints book covers for books he has yet to read, each one representing a promise of future discovery. His exaggerated brushstrokes and abstracted masses of colour beautifully transform each book’s essence into a visual experience that resonates deeply. Continuing this exploration of abstraction, Labyrinths (Libraries) #29 (2025) thoughtfully delves into the logic of grids and the intricate order found within libraries. The interplay of positive and negative space in these paintings reflects the shifting perspectives we encounter, evoking the dynamic relationship between time, ideas, and the wealth of knowledge within a library’s vast collection.

In Modernity and Beyond (2020), through his captivating Ambient Walking YouTube channel, he brings to life the former premises of SAM, delving into the building’s rich history as a powerful symbol of the continuous evolution of artistic and cultural infrastructure in Singapore. With a fiery passion for historical inquiry, The Book of Equators #1 (2024) boldly examines imperial legacies, shedding light on the mundane polyester fabrics sourced from a local shop in Singapore. By superimposing intricate lines of latitude over the vibrant, mass-produced tropical patterns, Chong passionately critiques the enduring impacts of colonial imposition and its deep entwinement with the modern consumer culture that flourishes in the tropics.

Tracing Singapore’s edges and mapping spaces

Internationally recognized and disseminated, Chong’s art embodies a uniquely Singaporean sensibility. Profoundly anchored in his experiences in Singapore, Chong scrutinizes the city’s polished facade to uncover its myriad layers, where personal memory intersects with collective experience. In Calendars (2020 – 2096) (2004-2010), viewers are presented with 1,001 images depicting paradoxically vacant public-accessible spaces throughout Singapore, captured by Chong over a span of seven years. Arranged as calendar pages set in a hypothetical future, Chong challenges traditional perceptions of time, inviting viewers to derive meaning from the memories of a future yet to unfold. Chong’s extensive installation, Perimeter Walk (2013-2024), employs a comparable documentary approach. Comprising 550 postcards featuring images taken as the artist navigated the borders of Singapore on foot, the work rejects a singular perspective of the city, intricately weaving a multifaceted narrative of life at its periphery. Functioning as a pop-up store where patrons may purchase the postcards, the exhibition fosters the exchange and dissemination of these images, extending their visual narratives beyond the confines of the gallery.

In the project titled 106B Depot Road Singapore 102106 (2024), Chong collaborates with Jiehao Lau to reconstruct the contours of his residential building, which serves as a distinctive exemplar of the archetypal public housing design in Singapore, synonymous with the modernity of the city-state. However, through its manifestation via speech and memory rather than conventional architectural plans, the work imbues this pragmatic efficiency with a distinctly human touch.

Beyond Singapore, the exhibition addresses the entrenched systems and structures of power that regulate our lives. Foreign Affairs #106 (2018/2025) presents photographs of embassy backdoors, which Chong employs as recurring motifs. This systematic approach evokes both the cinematic frame and the omnipresence of the surveillance camera that observes both nothing and everything. In a parallel visual strategy, The Straits Times, Friday, September 27, 2013, Cover (2018), part of his series Abstracts From The Straits Times, utilizes repetition and overlap to “submerge” and “black out” journalistic headlines and photographs from Singapore’s principal daily newspaper. This process reflects the glitch introduced during the creation of the work, prompting viewers to acknowledge concealed biases in editorial choices and fostering critical consumption in today’s mediated landscape.

Reconstructing meaning through textural and material interventions 

The exhibition poignantly highlights Chong’s deep exploration of meaning through the intricate interplay of form, particularly in Secrets and Lies (The Impossibility of Reconstitutions) (2012), which features 326 spy and espionage novels shredded and transformed into disjointed, out-of-context statements and quotes. This irreversible act, which reduces these narratives to the fragments that once formed their entirety, evokes a sense of loss, creating an ironic “encryption” of their original content. In a similar vein, Works on Paper #2: Prospectus (2006/2024) offers a glimpse into a forever-lost novel, now reduced to just 239 salvaged words that bear the weight of a hasty deletion. With the original meaning known only to Chong, these remnants take on a new, profound role, serving as both a textual and physical monument to the sorrowful absence of what once was.

In The Singapore Flag (2015), Chong tenderly reimagines the iconic national symbol. Just like other national flags, the Singapore flag beautifully embodies the nation’s ideals, beliefs, and values. Yet, this artwork takes a unique approach by presenting the flag as text, featuring an official description in the same heartfelt red hue as the state flag itself. This thoughtful presentation encourages the viewer to connect emotionally with the flag, inviting them to imagine its significance rather than merely observe it.

Materiality is further examined in Monument to the People We’ve Conveniently Forgotten (I Hate You) (2008), which presents a tactile expanse of obscured name cards upon which visitors are encouraged to tread. The aggregation of these obscured cards satirizes the performance and routine characteristics of social exchange, disorienting visitors physically and prompting contemplation on human connections.

With his series Stacks (2003-ongoing), Chong presents annual sculptural works, each conceived over the period of a year, thus reflecting the passage of time and the rhythm of this chronological threshold. Comprising books and glasses Chong read and used in the preceding year—familiar, everyday objects imbued with personal significance, each “stack” serves as both a punctuation and a record of time passed. 

Embracing the processes of performance

Finally, the exhibition features Chong’s performances that center on the experience and dissemination of texts. One of Chong’s most renowned works, The Library of Unread Books (2016-ongoing), co-created with Renée Staal, serves as an itinerant reference library comprised of unread books donated by the public, simultaneously addressing issues of distribution, access, and knowledge surplus. Two time-based performances will be presented on Saturdays throughout the duration of the exhibition: Everything (Wikipedia) (2016) and A Short Story About Geometry (2009). A Short Story About Geometry, which is part of the series Memories, invites public engagement and is experienced solely through the transmission of its narrative between an instructor and a participant. The artist has vowed never to publish the short story in print or digital formats — the essence of Chong’s narrative is conveyed through memorization and retelling, necessitating a mutual investment of time and effort to engage with the work.

Connecting audiences to Chong’s practice

A heartfelt publication inspired by the exhibition is set to be released in May 2025. It will offer a thoughtful companion index of Chong’s concept-based artworks paired with insightful essays that explore Chong’s connection to conceptualism during the 2000s, a time marked by the emergence of social media and Singapore’s commitment to contemporary art. Additionally, SAM will graciously host two engaging talks that delve into Chong’s artistic journey, featuring esteemed guests like Dr. Bill Sherman from The Warburg Institute, known for his groundbreaking work on marginalia and library history, alongside Pauline J. Yao, a respected Hong Kong-based independent curator and writer with a rich history with the artist’s practice. These enlightening discussions are scheduled for 14 June 2025 and 21 June 2025, inviting everyone to deepen their understanding and appreciation of Chong’s important work.