Amanda Heng: A Pause

Amanda Heng Liang Ngim examines the body, resilience and the everyday as lived encounters

Singapore Art Museum (SAM) announces the title and theme of the exhibition by artist Amanda Heng Liang Ngim, presented in collaboration with curator Selene Yap, at the 61st Venice Biennale.

Amanda Heng Liang Ngim will present A Pause, an exhibition that extends her decades-long practice of engaging the body and the everyday. The exhibition transforms the pavilion into an environment for rest and observation, centred on ordinary actions such as sitting, waiting, and watching. 

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. 

Heng’s practice unfolds through recurring gestures. Across decades, she returns to simple acts: walking, sitting, waiting, allowing them to gather new meanings over time. In her early works, such as Let’s Chat (1996) and Walk with Amanda (2000), she established a method of unscripted, social encounter. These live performances used simple acts like household tasks or leading an audience through a hawker food centre to examine how public and domestic spaces are shaped, gendered and negotiated. The body in these works is a social body, negotiating its presence within the architecture of the everyday.

This foundational interest is also evident in the pivotal photographic series Parts of My Body (1990). Using direct, unadorned close-ups of her own limbs and joints, she presented the body as a matter of fact: a site of personal attention rather than public display. This early investigation into the body’s materiality and agency prefigured a lifelong exploration of how identity and history are carried physically. 

A Pause is a site-specific installation that brings together these moments at a scale and intensity shaped by the context of Biennale Arte 2026. It invites reflection on 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. In a global art landscape often driven by acceleration, A Pause proposes slowness as a deliberate, critical stance.

Artist Amanda Heng Liang Ngim says, “My work comes from ordinary experience. A Pause looks at rest as something necessary and familiar to all of us. Moving beyond the physical forms, our bodies look inward to find the inner strength and stillness for resilience and renewal. I would like to extend this invitation for reflection to visitors of the Biennale Arte 2026 when the site-specific installation opens in the Pavilion.”  

Curator Selene Yap explains: “Amanda Heng’s method of building work from unscripted social encounters positions the body as a site of continuous negotiation. A Pause advances this practice, creating a space where rest becomes a collective act. The pavilion proposes the everyday as a primary material for artistic and social inquiry.”

Eugene Tan, Co-Chair of the Commissioning Panel and Chief Executive Officer and Director of SAM, says: “Amanda Heng is a foundational figure in Singapore’s contemporary art history. Her practice is a rigorous and relatable close reading of her local conditions, bringing a stringent curiosity to bear on the textures of daily life. Through a body of work that is both thoughtful and grounded, she demonstrates a sharp insight into the forces, both intimate and societal, that shape our lives. In A Pause, this acute awareness extends to the subtle, overlooked rhythms of everyday life, inviting a closer attention to our own presence and surroundings.”

Elaine Ng, Chief Executive Officer of the National Arts Council (NAC), adds: “As the commissioner of the Singapore Pavilion, NAC is proud to present Singapore’s most significant artistic voices to the world stage. Through A Pause by Amanda Heng at the 61st International Venice Biennale, audiences are invited to rediscover a shared humanity through the familiar gestures of daily life.

Commissioned by the National Arts Council, Singapore, supported by the Ministry of Culture, Community and Youth and organised by SAM, this marks Singapore’s 12th presentation at the Venice Biennale. The Singapore Pavilion officially opens on May 6, 2026 at the Arsenale’s Sale d’Armi, with the exhibition on display on the second floor from May 9 to November 22, 2026.

Media kit

Media queries
International: Mae Cuthbertson (Flint Culture)
Singapore and Southeast Asia: Farah Aqilah (Tate Anzur) and Teo Zhi Xin (SAM)