Singapore 2026

Title: A Pause
Commissioner: Elaine Ng, National Arts Council
Curator: Selene Yap
Exhibitor: Amanda Heng Liang Ngim

For the Singapore Pavilion at the Biennale Arte 2026, Amanda Heng Liang Ngim presents “A Pause”, an exhibition that extends her decades-long practice of working with the body and the everyday. The exhibition transforms the pavilion into a space for rest and observation, centred on ordinary actions such as sitting, waiting, and watching. 

Commissioned by the National Arts Council (NAC), supported by the Ministry of Culture, Community and Youth and organised by SAM, Singapore’s 12th presentation at the International Art Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia underscores the nation’s continued support for artists whose practices engage critically with the world through experimentation, participation and sustained practice. 

A pioneering figure in Singapore’s contemporary art scene, Heng’s practice began in the late 1980s as a response to the social and artistic conditions of a rapidly modernising city-state. Spanning performance, installation, photography and participatory acts, her work has consistently focused on the body as both subject and medium. This focus is grounded in close attention to the everyday, treated as both method and material. 

“A Pause” invites visitors to think about how endurance and renewal are cultivated not through grand gestures, but through the quiet, persistent rhythms of daily life – through the body’s instinctual capacity for rest, resilience, and self-determination.