This week in arts (June 5 to 11): Three must-see shows from abstraction to prints

Shadows, Signals, And The Line

For many, Singapore art is still synonymous with scenes of the Singapore River or watercolours of shophouses. Lately, a newer motif might have entered public consciousness – the samsui woman.

But this two-level show, curated by John Tung, proves that Singapore art is more. He brings together a group of artists who work in abstraction. There are helpful quotes from him in each room to guide interpretation. He draws your attention to the squares, the lines and even the shadows.

The exhibition is free at The Private Museum atop Emily Hill. The first room already shows the different ways artists have approached abstraction – a collage by Goh Beng Kwan; a gigantic swirling painting by Henri Chen KeZhan; Jane Lee’s textured paint on fibreglass that looks to sink off the canvas from its own weight; and Choy Weng Yang’s more superficially plain yellow painting that reveals unexpected variation the more one looks.

On the upper floor, Tung has created a pathway among a forest of Wong Keen’s three-dimensional flesh carcasses made of rice paper. Kumari Nahappan has a triptych of teal abstracts that are almost religious; Lam Fung conjures vivid, otherworldly fauna.

Many of these artists had long wanted to be presented in an exhibition with Choy, who died in 2025 at 95 in the midst of planning this exhibition. A room is dedicated to the artist and former curator, a shorthand for his decades of practice.

In the context of an introduction to abstraction, Milenko Prvacki’s series Abstraction For Beginners, with its recognisable but nebulous forms, takes on the more literal meaning of its title. Is it a tree stump or a limb? Those looking begin to dare to venture meaning.

Where: The Private Museum, 11 Upper Wilkie Road
MRT: Little India/Rochor
When: Till Aug 23, 10am to 7pm (weekdays), 11am to 5pm (weekends)
Admission: Free
Info: str.sg/BVQW

Zarina: Directions To My House

STPI, a print and paper gallery along the Singapore River, hosts its annual special exhibition, this time surveying the work of diasporic artist Zarina.

The Indian-American artist, who died in 2020, is closely associated with the minimalist movement. But being a Muslim-Indian woman who has lived and worked in Bangkok, New Delhi, Paris, Bonn, Tokyo, Santa Cruz and New York, she is also known for her meditations on borders, conflict, home and the itinerant nature of some people’s lives.

STPI’s show will be her biggest in South-east Asia, with over 50 print works brought together from 12 lenders. These will be exhibited together with some of her printing plates, woodblocks and tools. She studied printmaking in Thailand, France and Japan and made it a central medium in her work.

Some of her best-known series are on show, including Home Is A Foreign Place (1999), woodblock prints that pair an Urdu word with a graphic reminding the artist of a memory. There are her signature jagged lines that split the sheet – a violent border but also a migrant’s unending journey.

A later work reflects on the displacement of the Rohingyas in Myanmar. The exhibition is curated by her former studio manager Sarah Burney.

Where: STPI, 41 Robertson Quay
MRT: Clarke Quay/Fort Canning
When: June 6 to Aug 1, 10am to 7pm (Mondays to Saturdays), closed on Sundays
Admission: Free
Info: str.sg/xiNH

Lita Cabellut: Layered Identities

This is the last weekend to catch the solo of Spanish artist Lita Cabellut at the Opera Gallery in Ion Orchard. She presents a series of large portraits of women, who emerge from canvases she has painted and stepped on, baked and torn.

With red as the dominant colour, there should be a flamenco quality to these women, but the effect is more complicated. Cabellut’s palette and technique have been said to be comparable with those of the fresco painters centuries ago.

Even though the models in her paintings are young and contemporary, they look faded by time. The burst of colour she has thrown on them appears almost as graffiti, a meditation on time and how art can accrete to become something new.

There is also a work here from her earlier Dried Tear series, where she applies a similar technique to Asian women. In this particular work, the woman gazes downwards with a certain steeliness that Cabellut puts down to Asian women being more adept at concealing their feelings.

Where: Opera Gallery, 02-16 Ion Orchard, 2 Orchard Turn
MRT: Orchard
When: Till June 7, 11am to 8pm
Admission: Free
Info: str.sg/7hef