Artist: Amanda Heng
On 14 July 2025, Singapore Art Museum (SAM) announced that Amanda Heng, pioneering contemporary artist, has been appointed to represent Singapore at the Venice Biennale in 2026. With Selene Yap, curator leading the curatorial direction, it promises Singapore’s 12th year participation at the Venice exhibition, to be one of thoughtful resonance that deeply reflects worldly concerns within a contemporary sphere.
Amanda is a pioneer performance and multidisciplinary artist whose notable contribution, since the 1980s, has been fundamentally momentous in shaping Singapore’s contemporary discourse, across works and themes that remain relevant, up to this day.
The Curatorial Direction of the 90s
Generally, when contemplating the significant efficacy of the 90s landscape, be it economic, cultural, or lifestyle, more potently its public discourse, there was an inevitable standard of compensatory modulation. And to be more exact, an acceleration of contemporary production, prominently a heavy weight, that marked several historic disruptions. Between grunge, feminism and the potent reckoning of several civilisations, beginning at the pivotal period of 1989 – suddenly, the gatekeepers of taste, identity, and information were not solely institutional.
The decade moved in rather capricious rhythms, between Nirvana’s raw disillusionment to the third-wave feminist critique, right from the digital dawn to geopolitical rebalancing. It was a time of both rupture and reinvention as old world order faded, and a more pluralistic, but periodically disoriented sensibility emerged.
Toward the end of the 80s, Amanda Heng discovered the prominence of art and its voluminous impact in characterising expression of defiance. Her missionary journey was inspired by the women’s liberation movement and feminist art at Central St. Martins, which subsequently set the foundation for the classic development of creativity dedicated to awareness and empowerment. This was inventively true to the cultural domain of artistic pursuits, where expression became its sole proprietor, transitioning from the traditional narrative of escapism to an illumination of reality’s uncanny discourse. Correspondingly, art evolved in another revolutionary mission, as modernism began to unravel and exceptional individuals skilled in contemporary decadence became symbols of urban iconoclasts.
Around the same time she started out her career, delving in the arts, Heng co-founded The Artists Village, Singapore’s first artist-run collective, that championed experimental contemporary art in the region. A decade later, she went on to help establish Women in the Arts (WITA), the first women’s artist collective in Singapore, a platform that fostered feminist discourse and profound representation across a male-dominated environment.
The Heng Retrospective: Defining Works
The 90s was inevitably a heated transcendent to societal civic breakthroughs that sought to test traditionalists, and for Heng, she became part of the change illustrating raw expression from personal experience and the interplay of social identity.
S/HE (1994)
A key early performance exploring cultural and gender identity. Heng deconstructs traditional and Western influences by mixing flour, narrating Confucian sayings, and throwing the dough at the audience. At the time, it marked a provocative stance, especially within Singapore’s conservative art scene—emerging not long after the controversial Josef Ng provocative performance which intensified public discourse around censorship and performance art.
Albeit, her later works, S/He was her first performative art in action, daring to question cultural conflicts imbued by tradition, amid heralding Western modernism—and its impact on women, expanded on the foundation of feminism. This drew distinct narrative to amplifying both economic and social progression for the female demographic.
Let’s Chat (1996)
Perhaps some deeper resonance to Southeast Asian community life, and to some may seem relatively minute in scale, but Heng unravelled solace in peeling bean sprouts at a table. This fellowship was a curated participative performance, a notable artistic measure reviving traditional kampung hospitality, that potently explored community, memory, and female labour.
Let’s Chat was an engulfing social construct, doused in authentic ingenuity, emboldening the simpler acts of home chores and improvised dialogue.
Let’s Walk (1999–ongoing)
Perhaps her signature work: participants walk backwards, holding a high-heeled shoe in their mouth, guided only by a hand‑mirror. First staged in response to the 1997 Asian Financial Crisis. It was a time women facing job loss resorted to beauty norms, critiquing the commodification of women’s appearance over skill. The piece has been restaged internationally and remains central to her practice.
Singirl (1999–ongoing)
A long-running participatory project subverting the ideal image of the Singapore Girl (Singapore Airlines stewardess). Women are invited to anonymously submit photos of their bare bottoms, reclaiming bodily agency and challenging objectified feminine stereotypes.
Some of the more controversial rebellions to conservatism, bodily image often pertain to visually explicit expression. And so, within this sphere, Singirl provides a face-off to exemplary unorthodox empowerment, deliberately reclaiming the female form through anonymous submission, stripping away glamour to confront the audience with raw, unapologetic agency.
Every Step Counts (2019)
Commissioned for the Singapore Biennale, this expansive project not only extended ‘Let’s Walk,’ but also integrated a range of new elements—including workshops, live performances, video, archival materials, and large text installations—thereby deepening its impact and broadening its reach. It reflected on ageing and bodily endurance. This earned Heng the prestigious 12th Benesse Prize (first ever for a Singaporean).
A Singaporean Legacy takes World Stage
(right) Selene Yap, Curator, (left) Amanda Heng, Artist
Heng’s legacy is an anatomy of grounded story-telling that builds on authentic artistry encapsulating the identity of Southeast Asia, from grassroots collectives to a global, dialogic practice, that manifests community and performance. Her life’s works is but a genuine reflection of humanity’s complex, and a personal invitation to to walk, talk, and transform together.
(Images from Singapore Art Museum)
