‘We love Singapore’: Why Japanese collective teamLab keeps making works here

SINGAPORE – Drivers in Singapore may curse the Electronic Road Pricing system, but teamLab’s Takashi Kudo waxes lyrical about watching the river of traffic divert its flow to avoid a wireless toll gantry.

Singapore’s roads, he suggests, are practically pioneers in interactive digital art. 

“Singaporeans are very much open to the future and new technologies. The people are not scared to be changed. That’s spiritual and it touches our hearts,” says Kudo in English over a Zoom call from Tokyo, where the visionary immersive art collective is headquartered.

Where he lives and works, the gregarious teamLab member quips, one is resigned to being stuck in traffic. 

He is speaking to The Straits Times ahead of teamLab’s solo exhibition Infinite Existence, which runs at Supper House’s Tanjong Pagar Distripark gallery from Sept 19 to Nov 8.

Known for its behemoth immersive museum exhibitions, teamLab will showcase a more intimate side with eight screen-based works curated by Singaporean Yu Ke Dong.  

From a colourful 2012 12-channel work representing the clash of nature and culture in a city to a 2026 black-and-white video loop representing the infinite sea, the solo reprises many of teamLab’s favourite themes since its founding in 2001.

The works are curated around the idea of “ultrasubjective space”, the collective’s digital approach to pre-modern East Asian perspective and audience immersion. 

Supper House founder Ashley Chiam hopes to reintroduce the collective to private collectors in Singapore, who can acquire these smaller-scale works priced at six figures.

He says: “There is a part of teamLab’s practice that is perhaps less immediately visible than its spectacular large-scale environments – its ability to create a profound sense of beauty through relatively simple, intimate encounters with light, movement, colour and life.” 

Kudo, on the other hand, tells a less romantic story of teamLab’s screen-based works.

Twenty years ago, the prices of projectors were 10 times the current price and so teamLab’s adoption of screens harks back to the humble beginnings of a collective that now has 11 permanent museums worldwide.

Encountering the works at Supper House, he says, is more akin to the intimate experience of reading a book versus the spectacle of watching a film.

That the new solo is taking place at Tanjong Pagar Distripark, where teamLab’s long-time art dealer Ikkan Sanada operated a gallery until 2021, represents a full-circle moment for the collective.

What sweetens the deal for Kudo is that his favourite store Outram Ya Hua Bak Kut Teh is moving from nearby into the arts cluster at the end of the year. 

Asked why teamLab took on this intimate project when it is courted by institutions globally, the earnest Kudo – smiling through his camera’s fisheye lens – says: “To be honest, if we have any kind of offer from Singapore, we’re likely to say yes. We love Singapore.” 

It is a mutual love affair as Singapore gave the collective its big international break when it showed its interactive holographic work, Peace Can Be Realized Even Without Order, at the 2013 Singapore Biennale. “Very few people treated us as artists, but Singapore was very open to the future,” he says. 

Its first permanent exhibition outside Tokyo is the ongoing Future World at the ArtScience Museum, which has welcomed close to five million visitors since 2016.

The collective is also expected to set up a new museum at Gardens by the Bay as part of a new Wetlands by the Bay attraction, which will open in stages from end-2028.

While the museum’s concept is still being developed, Kudo teases plans for an indoor-outdoor interactive experience that involves the visitor kayaking in water and experiencing the gardens as a canvas. One of the challenges teamLab is facing, he says, is how to make it work in Singapore’s humidity and heat.

In the interim, Singapore-based fans can expect more from the collective, with four new works of art introduced to the Future World exhibition in August.

For Chiam, Infinite Existence is also a prelude to courting regional collectors in a larger teamLab show Supper House is planning for Singapore Art Week 2027 – a landmark 15th edition that coincides with Singapore’s chairmanship of ASEAN.

Working with Sanada, he says fans can expect two teamLab shows a year from Supper House. Chiam hopes his outfit can offer an experience of teamLab creations that are different from the existing and upcoming institutional shows. 

Says Kudo: “If someone makes us happy, we want to give back to these people. We want to make people in Singapore much happier.” 

Book It/teamLab: Infinite Existence

Where: Supper House, 04-02 Tanjong Pagar Distripark, 37 Keppel Road
When: Sept 19 to Nov 8; Thursdays to Saturdays, noon to 7pm; Sundays, noon to 5pm
Admission: Free 
Info: str.sg/f5kX