Singapore Biennale 2025, Orchard edition: See five artworks at strata malls and old Raffles Girls’

SINGAPORE – While Singaporean shoppers head instinctively for big malls like Ion Orchard, the Orchard area is also home to older strata malls like Lucky Plaza and Far East Shopping Centre – which quietly go against the shopping street’s “luxurisation”.

See art in these malls – used more often by migrant workers – and get a rare chance to visit the vast, defunct campus of the old Raffles Girls’ School from Oct 31 to March 29, 2026 as part of Singapore Biennale 2025. Here are five must-see artworks curated by The Straits Times, in this adventurous 2.5km route. Admission is free.

1. Tan Pin Pin’s On A Clear Day You Can See Forever (2025)

In an oblique fashion, Singaporean artist and film-maker Tan Pin Pin’s two-channel video work captures the contradictions of Orchard’s old and new faces.

One screen shows the late Inuka – still the only polar bear to be born in the tropics – swimming back and forth in captivity, a mesmerising meditation on movement in stasis. Another screen explores the opposite – a single-take view from the passenger seat of a car as it drives at 80kmh across the Pan-Island Expressway, offering a panoramic view of Singapore from west to east.

The images bleed into each other and viewers are encouraged to place themselves at different points in the room to get different perspectives. Spend at least 15 minutes immersed in this room, which takes on a contemplative quality amid the buzz of Lucky Plaza. 

Where: 03-89/90 Lucky Plaza, 304 Orchard Road
When: 10am to 7pm daily

2. Eisa Jocson’s The Filipino Superwoman X H.O.M.E. Karaoke Living Room (2025)

Enter a Filipino living room and karaoke in the heart of Singapore’s “Little Manila”, Lucky Plaza. Filipina artist Eisa Jocson has teamed up with migrant worker rights group Humanitarian Organisation for Migration Economics (Home) and Filipino domestic workers to film music videos with delightful earworms.

On the importance of karaoke for Filipinos, Jocson says: “Singing is a form of affordable therapy for many, a means of economic survival for Filipino cover bands, and a vessel for transmitting indigenous wisdom through epic chanting traditions.”

Take a break by heading to the opposite unit – confectionery Pan De Marie sells a delicious pandesal (Filipino bread roll, $5 for a bag of five). Frequent diasporic customers to the area remark to this reporter that it is best enjoyed with a cup of coffee and a generous dollop of butter.

Where: 03-52 Lucky Plaza
When: 10am to 7pm daily

3. Yuri Pattison’s entropy study (2025)

Dozens of apartment marketing suite scale models – once used to sell property in China – now sit gloomily in a unit in Far East Shopping Centre, lit up occasionally by a quantum random number generator.

Irish artist Yuri Pattison’s work references China’s ongoing property crisis, as these are models of real estate projects that never took off. The window in the unit faces the skyline of Singapore’s expensive property market, a duet with the city for viewers to draw their own conclusions.

Where: 04-08 Far East Shopping Centre, 545 Orchard Road
When: 10am to 7pm daily

4. The Packet’s Water Under A Bridge / A Bridge Under Water (2025)

Remember the bulky CPUs (central processing units), carpeted floors and obiang (Singlish for “old-fashioned”) mouse pads of the mid-2000s internet cafe? Sri Lankan artist collective The Packet has recreated the iconic Y2K venue in a shopping centre.

You might not be able to surf YouTube, but you can surf the artist’s cheeky “YouSurp” site – littered with artificial intelligence videos – and video works by artists. Recalling the techno-utopianism of the early 2000s, the internet cafe melds past and future by gesturing to the contemporary ills of technological optimism.

Where: 01-10 Far East Shopping Centre
When: 10am to 7pm daily

5. Hothouse’s Primal Instinct (2025)

Several works can be found at the old Raffles Girls’ School – built in 1959 – although the vast scale of the 2.5ha compound can make the scale of the works feel underwhelming.

If you have time for only one artwork, visit the open school field where curatorial contributor Hothouse has invited artists Elizabeth Gabrielle Lee and Tini Aliman, as well as architectural collective Salad Dressing, to engage with the natural environment of the defunct campus.

In particular, Salad Dressing’s Square Forest (2025) squeezes 90 native plant species of Singapore into a square plot of land, referencing the work of building a “City in Nature”. Little birds can be seen hopping around the organic artwork and curators have also spotted frogs.

Where: School field, former Raffles Girls’ School, 20 Anderson Road
When: 10am to 7pm daily