SAMCollection: The Present is Unstable

Singapore Art Museum (SAM) presents SAMCollection: The Present is Unstable, approaching collection display through a dynamic format that considers how works in the museum’s collection reflect the changing conditions of our world today.

The exhibition will host a rotating roster of works over its nine-month run. As works are replaced and reconfigured, shifting relationships within and between them emerge, creating a dynamic space where new readings and conversations surface over time.

The exhibition opens with works that consider movement as a fundamental condition of our experience and how embodiment and looking propose ways to witness the world, situate ourselves, and move through our environment.

Shabbir Hussain Mustafa, Chief Curator of SAM, says, “Since SAM opened in 1996, its Collection has grown alongside the changing conditions of contemporary art in Singapore, Southeast Asia and the wider world. But a museum collection cannot remain only as a record of what has been acquired or preserved. The Present is Unstable asks a simple question: how can works from the past help us understand the present? By allowing artworks to move in and out of the gallery on a regular basis, the exhibition invites our publics to see how older histories, recent acquisitions and current concerns can speak to one another.” 

On its launch, the exhibition brings together works by Nadiah Bamadhaj, Farida Batool, Chua Chye Teck, Hao Jingban, Manny Montelibano, Gary-Ross Pastrana, Sin Wai Kin, Wei Leng Tay, Jason Wee that consider identity, history, memory and social structures through acts of looking, moving and participation. 

Sin Wai Kin’s The Time of Our Lives (2024) questions the authority of storytelling and identity norms through the lens of drag, while Nadiah Bamadhaj’s Casting Spells for the Movement (2021) invites reflection on the representation of women in history through an adaptation of a monument. Jason Wee’s Labyrinths (2017) proposes an unconventional, yet familiar route and draws attention to how invisible systems in our life shape how we move and interact with our urban environment. In Gary-Ross Pastrana’s Water Cuts (stone) (2017), viewers are invited to partake in an activity of ladling salt water onto a marble slab in the hopes of creating an enduring mark of collective action, alluding to ritual and belief in contemporary times. Permanence, or the futility of an immutable record, is explored in Chua Chye Teck’s Eternity (2007), Farida Batool’s Kahani Eik Shehr Ki (Story of a City) (2012) and Wei Leng Tay’s Untitled (sister) (2022) through experimentation with photography. 

Also featured is a new work by Hao Jingban, titled I Witness (2025), commissioned by the Han Nefkens Foundation, Mori Art Museum, M+, Hong Kong and SAM. The work traces grief through everyday routines and movements, positioning viewers as witnesses to loss while reflecting on whether mourning can be a collective act, remembered and carried out in public.

Across these works, looking becomes a form of participation, while the body in motion refuses fixed definitions and resists erasure. In this space, viewer’s movements play an active role in creating personal interpretations of the works, displacing institutional perspectives.

From the end of 2026, new works will enter the exhibition space. Works by Pio Abad, Ade Darmawan, Lotus L. Kang, Dinh Q. Le, Lim Tzay Chuen, Loeum Lorn, Naeem Mohaiemen and Erika Tan will expand on the ideas of social infrastructures, interiority and the global networks that connect us. Follow SAM’s social media channels for updates on the changing display and opportunities to witness artworks in transit.

As the exhibition evolves, works will be activated with a programme of tours, talks and workshops, offering ways to engage in and discover ideas that emerge with each change of display.

SAMCollection: The Present is Unstable runs from 2 October 2026 to 18 July 2027 at SAM at Tanjong Pagar Distripark. General admission fees apply, with free entry for Singaporeans and Permanent Residents. For more information, visit here.