Singapore Biennale
Oct. 31, 2025 - March 29, 2026
Singapore Art Museum
METABOLIC CONTAINER
Starting from 400 boxes of goods, part of a weekly, diasporic "trade" (one-way) between Batam in Indonesia, and Singapore. In which the container and its boxes are not just a carrier, but a medium. Then, a process of mixing, de-processing, upstreaming, downstreaming, imagining, inventing.
Another image of the ships hold, but this time one that is digesting itself, and shows old and new ways of eating and drinking, moving and thinking.
Wall caption, entrance to SIngapore Art Museum (SAM).
CAMPβs ππ¦π΅π’π£π°ππͺπ€ ππ°π―π΅π’πͺπ―π¦π³ reworks a standard 20-foot shipping container into an active medium. Starting from 400 boxes of everyday goods that move weekly from Batam to Singapore, CAMP treats the container as more than transport: a site where goods are sorted, combined, set into circulation, gestated and invented. Inside, the arrangement follows a diffusion-inspired flow adapted from image generation: boxes meet neighbours, features are sampled, noise is introduced and refined, and new ideas appear. The contents range from sambals, crackers and perfume to unknown goods in imported apple boxes, shifting from the familiar to the not yet present, via the unexpected. The project returns CAMP to the image of the ship's hold in their many maritime projects, to connect logistics at sea with bodies, everyday consumption and their possible future. Visitors enter one at a time to experience the container as a metabolising image from within.
Box Designer: Narendran Nair
Design and Production Assistance: Sanjana Ayappath
