Heman Chong: This is a dynamic list and may never be able to satisfy particular standards for completeness

Singapore Art Museum (SAM) is proud to present This is a dynamic list and may never be able to satisfy particular standards for completeness, a solo exhibition by Heman Chong. 

One of Singapore’s most iconic contemporary artists, Heman Chong epitomises a generation of artists from Southeast Asia that emerged in the late 1990s and early 2000s, riding a post-Cold War wave of globalisation to find international acclaim.

From artworks first made in 2003—the year Chong first participated in the Venice Biennale, disavowed video art, and began to curate internationally—to recent works made specifically for this occasion, the exhibition charts trajectories of Chong’s conceptual practice across two decades marked by internationally networked art production and the emergence of social media platforms. 

The title of this exhibition is a readymade text-based artwork, appropriated from a disclaimer for lists on Wikipedia. An indemnity as much as it is a declaration of intention, its application caveats that this is not a comprehensive survey of the artist’s practice. Developed with the artist, the exhibition unfolds across rooms organised around keywords: Words, Whispers, Ghosts, Journeys, Futures, Findings, Infrastructures, Surfaces and Endings. Much like metadata tags, these keywords suggest an ontology of the coordinated works, inviting the viewer into Chong’s critical and affective interrogation of objects, situations, logics and affinities which express the human condition in the 21st century. Each room offers a lens into Chong’s varied methods of making what he regards as cultural objects, presenting conceptual strategies honed through his engagement of governing systems that socially engineer meaning.

Featuring significant works in Chong’s oeuvre, the exhibition convenes pieces from Singapore’s national collection and from Chong’s numerous institutional collaborations throughout his prolific career. Highlights include installations Monument to the people we've conveniently forgotten (I hate you) (2008), Calendars (2020–2096) (2004–2010),The Library of Unread Books (2016), the ongoing painting series Cover (Versions) (2009–), and participatory performances like A Short Story About Geometry (2009), and Everything Wikipedia (2016); alongside recent work such as Foreign Affairs (2018–) and The Book of Equators (2024–).

Chong’s long-standing relationship with SAM traces back to formative regional exhibitions such as City/Community - Nokia Singapore Art (1999), and extends to recent commissions such as Safe Entry (2020), presented on the hoardings of Singapore Art Museum, and Modernity and Beyond (2020), of videos created for Chong’s Ambient Walking YouTube channel. The latter, filmed at SAM’s former premises on Bras Basah Road, alludes to the title of SAM’s inaugural exhibition, Modernity and Beyond: Themes in Southeast Asian Art (1996). These artworks, as much as the exhibition itself, demonstrate and evidence the artist’s reflexive gaze and systematic engagement with the institutional instruments of cultural discourse.

A publication titled after the exhibition provides a companion index of Chong’s concept-based art works alongside essays that survey Chong’s engagement with conceptualism over the 2000s, a period defined by the mass adoption of social media and Singapore’s state investment in contemporary art. Contributors include: Amal Khalaf, Carlos Quijon Jr., June Yap, Kathleen Ditzig, Pauline J. Yao and Ruba Katrib. Also included in the publication is a chapter from Chong’s sprawling novel, The Book of Drafts (2016–), a work that grapples with the act of producing fiction writing as an artist. 

In conjunction with the exhibition and accompanying publication, SAM will host two special in-depth talks on Chong’s practice, featuring Professor Bill Sherman from The Warburg Institute with his pioneering work on marginalia and the history of libraries (June 14, 2025); and Pauline J. Yao, Hong Kong-based independent curator and writer, previously Lead Curator (Visual Art) at M+ and with a long-standing familiarity with the artist’s practice (June 21, 2025). 

For more information on the exhibition, the publication, talks and programmes, please visit here.