Pioneer performance artist Amanda Heng to represent Singapore at 2026 Venice Biennale
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Amanda Heng will be the most senior artist to stage a solo at the Singapore Pavilion at the Venice Biennale.
PHOTO: SINGAPORE ART MUSUEM
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SINGAPORE – Pioneer performance artist Amanda Heng, 73, is Singapore’s pick for the prestigious Venice Biennale in 2026, the Singapore Art Museum (SAM) announced in a statement on July 14.
She will be the most senior artist to stage a solo at the Singapore Pavilion in Venice, and only the second woman artist to do so, after Shubigi Rao in 2022. Heng will collaborate with curator Selene Yap for her presentation at the 61st International Art Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia, which will take place from May 9 to Nov 22.
Dr Eugene Tan, co-chair of the commissioning panel and director of SAM, said of the panel’s choice of Heng: “Her sustained and evolving practice offers compelling ways of engaging the world through the body, performance and lived experience. Her work resonates with the urgencies of our time while being grounded in personal truth and poetic clarity.”
Singaporean artist Amanda Heng (right) will collaborate with curator Selene Yap for her presentation at the 2026 Venice Biennale.
PHOTO: SINGAPORE ART MUSEUM
Heng left her job as an income tax officer in 1986 to pursue art. She co-founded The Artists Village – Singapore’s first art colony, in a converted chicken farm – in 1988 and Singapore’s first artist-run women collective Women In The Arts in 1999. She was conferred the Cultural Medallion in 2010.
She is best known for her long-running performance works dealing with sociopolitical issues through everyday acts such as walking and conversing.
In Walking The Stool (1999), Heng took her studio stool for a walk in public as a way of questioning Singapore’s decade-long restrictions on performance art. That same year, she performed Let’s Walk, leading participants in walking backwards with a high-heeled shoe in their mouth, as a comment on women’s progress in society.
Her participatory performance Let’s Chat (1996) – presented in malls, markets and museums – offered an intimate space for the public to talk while peeling bean sprouts over tea. Another long-running project, Singirl, invited women to submit images of their bare bottoms as a comment on the demure image of the Singapore Girl.
Performance artist Amanda Heng in a video footage capturing her walking backwards, barefoot, with a high-heeled shoe in her mouth. Let’s Walk (1999) was a statement on how women are constrained by having to conform to a certain ideal of how they should look.
PHOTO: AMANDA HENG
This will be the 12th year Singapore is participating at the prestigious event in Venice which showcases contemporary art from all over the world.
The Singapore Pavilion has spotlighted artists such as Robert Zhao Renhui
It is commissioned by the National Arts Council and supported by the Ministry of Culture, Community and Youth.
The 2026 theme is In Minor Keys.
Those who are curious about Heng can see her work at the National Gallery Singapore’s revamped Singapore gallery
