Opinion | Singapore Biennale 2022 spreads its contemporary art far and wide. That may draw art lovers to some unlikely places, but it doesn’t always help the art

Singapore’s arts administrators have a mandate to create ‘cultural nodes’ in everyday places, but with Singapore Biennale they may have taken it too far

Showing contemporary art in unexpected places to draw visitors is all very well, but not if these works lack context or are lost in their surroundings

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Asa Sonjasdotter & Daniela Zambrano Almidon’s “Papitas Tarpuycha/Earthing Potatoes” (2011-ongoing), part of the Singapore Biennale 2022, which is showing art on several islands and at other unexpected locaions. Photo: courtesy of Singapore Art Museum

Published: 4:45pm, 23 Oct 2022Updated: 3:22pm, 26 Oct 2022

Launched on October 16, the seventh edition of the Singapore Biennale is doing its bit to boost the city state’s tourism sector after the pandemic.

For the first time, the flagship contemporary art event has gone beyond mainland Singapore, showing artworks on the resort island of Sentosa and more far-flung outlying islands in an effort to draw local and international visitors to diverse sites across the country.

However, this attempt to bolster Singapore’s status as a cultural tourism hotspot runs the risk of watering down the impact of the artworks. Without an accessible and coherent explanation of the exhibits’ context, the general visitor may be enthralled with the scenery but little else.

Organised by the Singapore Art Museum (SAM) and commissioned by the National Arts Council (NAC), the biennale presents work by over 60 artists from Singapore and around the world at locations including International Plaza in the central business district; Ferris wheel the Singapore Flyer; a well-preserved shophouse at 22 Orchard Road in Dhoby Ghaut; Sentosa Cove; St John’s Island and Lazarus Island in the country’s south, and; the traditional gallery spaces at SAM’s outpost in Tanjong Pagar Distripark.

The island of Sentosa is one of the venues of Singapore Biennale 2022 Photo: courtesy of Lim Yeow Ann

“There is a specific fit of artworks to these sites based on characteristics of both the green open spaces and histories of the Southern Islands,” says June Yap, Singapore Art Museum’s director of curatorial, collections, and programmes.