Singapore Art Museum shows probe afterlives of performance and common objects

When a performance ends and its material decays, what remains of art?

- Shawn Hoo

For almost a decade, a lush green dress hand-knitted with threads of leek has been eating itself while it rests in a conservation room. The wearable artwork, made over the course of a 180-hour public performance, has been emitting gases which only accelerate its decay, in a metaphor for auto-cannibalism.

Since it entered the Singapore Art Museum's (SAM) collection, Malaysian artist Chia Chuyia's organic garment has been hurtling towards its inevitable end.

Curator Teng Yen Hui is hauling it out of storage for the first time since it showed at the 2016 Singapore Biennale. She says about accessioning Chia's Knitting The Future: "We made a note in our system that it may or may not last another showing."

The garment's outing is also the final one in its current form. Now desiccated and browned, it is splayed under a glass casing at a new SAM exhibition which opens on Sept 12 - but will be laid to rest in a final performance on Jan 24, 2026.

Chia will attempt to don the garment, then fold it up and return the work to the museum's collection in a form that is more durable and persistent.

SECOND LIFE OF A PERFORMANCE It is on show at The Living Room, an exhibition curated by Ms Teng which reflects on the afterlives of performance and asks how the ephemerality of performance-based art can be collected and presented in new ways.

The Living Room is one of two new exhibitions at SAM's one-year-old Collection Gallery, which also hosts Talking Objects - a show which explores the rebirth of everyday objects in contemporary art.

Both exhibitions, says Ms Teng, 37, who is also SAM's manager of collections, deal with unconventional materials and the question of how to care for and re-present them.