Singapore Art Week 2026
Artist Lawrence Lek sends self-driving cars to therapy with Guanyin in new exhibition
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London-based artist Lawrence Lek's exhibition NOX: Confessions Of A Machine is on at the ArtScience Museum from Jan 23 to April 19.
ST PHOTO: JASON QUAH
- Lawrence Lek's NOX at the ArtScience Museum imagines a rehab centre for burnt-out self-driving cars, treated by the chatbot Guanyin.
- The exhibition coincides with Singapore's launch of driverless vehicle trials.
- Lek was named in 2024 by Time Magazine as one of the 100 most influential people in artificial intelligence.
AI generated
SINGAPORE – London-based artist Lawrence Lek’s upcoming exhibition conjures a rehabilitation centre – not for deviant humans, but for sentient self-driving vehicles which burn out and are sent for therapy with the mental health chatbot Guanyin, named after the goddess of mercy.
This might sound like hardcore science fiction, but the 43-year-old thinks his world resembles the corporate logic of well-being today. “Just like some companies have perks for their employees – massages at work, team-building activities to make people enjoy work more – what if you had a case where you had a super-intelligent self-driving car you forced to work 24/7 and the company created a mental health app for the car?”
NOX: Confessions Of A Machine – to be held at the ArtScience Museum from Jan 23 to April 19 as part of Singapore Art Week – invites visitors to step into the rehabilitation centre in a work that blends role-playing video game, music and architecture. Lek, who flew in to Singapore from London, spoke to The Straits Times at the museum ahead of the exhibition’s installation and opening.
Named in 2024 by Time Magazine as one of the 100 most influential people in artificial intelligence (AI), Lek is at the forefront of fleshing out speculative narratives about automation’s effects. The premise of NOX is especially timely as Singapore started trialling driverless shuttle services in Punggol on Jan 12
In 2019, Lek staged a work titled 2065 at the Singapore Biennale, imagining a post-work society where people spend all their leisure time playing video games. That same year, he released a feature-length sci-fi musical AIDOL, about a fading idol who enlists an AI songwriter to mount a comeback. Both read as prescient today in the age of doomscrolling and new AI tools.
Lek’s work, which premiered at the LAS Art Foundation in Berlin in 2023, has since travelled the world and makes its South-east Asian premiere in Singapore.
He says: “In each of these places where the project is shown, the car means a very different thing. In Germany, the car is a cultural object that has a relation to a local industry, population and society. In some places like Singapore, a car is a super high-end luxury item. In Los Angeles, a car is a complete necessity to function in society.”
A still from artist Lawrence Lek’s NOX: Confessions Of A Machine.
PHOTO: SADIE COLES HQ
But it is the first time that NOX and Guanyin (Confessions Of A Former Chatbot) are being shown together, and Lek hopes this will create multiple entry points for audiences to experience the perspectives of both the caregiver and the sentient car.
The work is presented in collaboration with Farsight Corporation. This is a fictional Anglo-Chinese technology conglomerate Lek invented in 2017 which he has since legally registered as a real company. It is part of his work as a “method artist” which has informed how he thinks of the company as a non-human entity with certain rights and liabilities.
“Of course, Singapore being founded by a company is also an interesting thing,” notes the artist, who was born to Malaysian-Chinese parents and spent his childhood in several Asian cities, including Singapore. In 1819, Sir Stamford Raffles, representing the British East India Company, established Singapore as a British trading post.
Lek believes that art can be instructive for tech companies. “When I realised that big, well-funded companies take video games very seriously, I thought, what if they took fine art very seriously as a field of human work worth studying?”
After NOX, Lek – who sees his work as part of an expanding cinematic universe – wants to venture further into the future. His next series, which he is calling Death Drive, gets even more existential than psychotherapy for automobiles.
“The idea of a fixed life and identity is really strange. If you’re a self-driving car, what sense of mortality would there be?”
Book It/ NOX: Confessions Of A Machine
Where: ArtScience Museum, 6 Bayfront Avenue str.sg/gZLJ
When: Jan 23 to April 19; Sundays to Thursdays, 10am to 7pm; Fridays and Saturdays, 10am to 9pm
Admission: Singaporean adults (from $13) and concession (from $10); adult tourists (from $15) and concession (from $12)
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