by Marco Marcon.

There is no use in complaining about the “proliferation of biennales,” as many of us did a couple of decades ago. Like international art fairs, biennales are part and parcel of the infrastructure of the globalised art world and are here to stay. The two events are two sides of the same coin: art fairs serve the market’s interests, biennales boast a veneer of independence and are usually government-funded.
        Although I know that in the art world the separation between private and public, commercialism and independence, is often blurred, I find art fairs repulsive. The first of such events I ever visited was FIAC—now rebranded Art Basel Paris—held in the beautiful Grand Palais. As I stepped onto the first-floor balcony for a bird’s-eye view of the exhibition space, I noticed the vast nave divided into dozens of small booths. It reminded me of a battery-cage chicken farm, with dealers and gallerinas watching over the golden eggs produced by their artists, hoping for interest from Russian oligarchs and Middle-Eastern oil magnates.
        What offended me was not the unabashed commercialism but the implicit assumption that contemporary art can be reduced to small portable objects one can hang on plywood partitions separating cramped cubicles. What happened to the Gesamtkunstwerk or the grand utopian visions of the avant-gardes? It is true that some of the leading art fairs now incorporate a few large installations—but then, so do luxury stores.



A well-known art dealer once told me that they were in the business of selling “exclusivity.” But how does this square with row upon row of mundane selling stands? Where is the shock, the vision, the aura, the—dare I say it—romance? I am not proud of my aversion to art fairs, as it betrays residues of juvenile idealism I delude myself into having left behind. But I am far too old to change what has stayed with me since my youth.
        Despite all the overlaps and complicities, we should not always paint biennales and art fairs with the same brush. In recent years, some leading international art surveys, including major ones like Venice and Documenta, have sought to distance themselves from market dictates. Documenta 15, for example, was by far the most radical attempt to rethink what an international art exhibition could be. Ruangrupa, the artists’ collective in charge of the event, challenged not just the market but also the traditional concept of international exhibitions as platforms for showcasing individual artists’ works.
        By all accounts, the experiment failed because, as is often the case, projects based on participation and process have little to say to those who have not been involved. In many cases, the public at large feels left out of conversations and exchanges they have not been part of. Unfortunately, a productive critical discussion about the achievements and failures of Documenta 15 was silenced by the clamour of preposterous accusations of antisemitism that sent German cultural commentators into hysterical moral convulsions.   



Large international exhibitions have to contend with more than market pressure, government interference, and the fatuous rituals of the international art world. Perhaps the most important curatorial challenge for any of these events is managing the relationship between the local and the global. Organisers must decide to what extent the event, despite its international nature, will have a meaningful relationship with the host city. In this respect, the Venice Biennale and Documenta set bad precedents as they are both largely disconnected from the historical and cultural specificity of their urban contexts. Conversely, Manifesta, a roving European art survey that changes its location every two years, was specifically created to establish a dialogue with the host community. Pure Intention was also conceived to respond to and engage with the uniqueness of Singapore’s urban fabric and social history.
        While the event also includes a smaller but worthy museum display at the Singapore Art Museum (SAM), most of the works were dispersed across the city. To make it easier for the visitor and to create a thematic continuity responsive to the distinctiveness of the sites, works were located in four urban clusters: the Civic District, Orchard Road, the Rail Corridor area, and Tanjong Pagar.


Allowing the works to engage with a variety of indoor and outdoor sites that represent some of the many dimensions of Singapore’s complex history and identity was a great decision by the curatorial team. It is also, arguably, an obvious approach for any biennale that doesn’t want to be mistaken for an art fair in disguise. Art fairs are so decontextualised that it would be more coherent and practical to hold them in major international airports. Dealers, buyers, and artists could all stay in airport hotels, possibly in the transit area, to avoid customs and immigration, and any risk of catching a glimpse of what was once called “real life.”
        Pure Intention’s dominant theme centred on the gap between the utopian visions of urban and economic development conceived by government and big business, and the everyday reality of people who have to live with the results of the “pure intentions” of politicians and businesspeople. Artworks were displayed in old markets, public housing estates, government precincts, shopping malls, offices, parks, cinemas, and many other public locations that represent different aspects of the city’s life.
        Westerners can sometimes be a bit condescending about what they perceive as Singapore’s less-than-perfect liberal democracy. This is why it is refreshing when the questioning of official narratives comes from those who live in this remarkable city-state. However, visitors were not confronted with grand statements or strident denunciations. Artworks were low-key interventions, like notes in the margins of Singapore’s self-assured, carefully managed and meticulously planned urbanism. This is more persuasive than the spectacularity that so many other international art events court. Contemporary art festers on the edges where grand utopias begin to fray.
        Of course, not all works in this exhibition are by local artists—although most are from Singapore’s Asian neighbours—or address aspects of Singaporean history and society directly. But nothing seemed out of context.



I also greatly appreciated the inclusion of historical works. Only the very best of these large-scale international art surveys—such as, for example, Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev’s Documenta 13—have the intelligence to create the conditions for a dialogue between the present and the past.
        Curators and artistic directors frequently fall victim to a harmful form of presentism. This tendency is partly due to their lingering attachment to the modernist belief in the importance of the “now.” Additionally, the influence of the internet and globalisation tends to favour synchronic perspectives—those that focus on simultaneous events—over diachronic ones, which consider historical development over time. The present, offered to us by the instantaneity of global communication, is so bewilderingly immense that it quickly exhausts our ever-diminishing attention span, leaving little or no room for other considerations.
        Singapore’s post-colonial history is very short indeed, and this biennale coincided with the 60th anniversary of its independence. What the country managed to achieve against unfavourable odds is an unparalleled feat of self-creation. But this exhibition highlights that development always comes at a cost. As Duncan Bass writes in the introductory catalogue essay:

Speculative investment and state-led environmental design are all symptoms of the same condition: the refusal to accept disorder as real. The participating artists do not aim to resolve these contradictions but to inhabit them.

Singapore Biennale 2025: Pure Intention, 31 October – 29   March 2026.

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Header images: 

1. Kah Bee Chow, installation view of Effeminacy, 2012, digital video (colour, sound), 14 min 5 sec. Collection of the artist. Photographed by Marco Marcon.

2. Izat Arifm installation views of In Loving Memory, 2025, terrazzo bench and outdoor industrial paint, 83 × 119 × 69 cm. Singapore Biennale 2025 Commission. Photographed by Marco Marcon.