
Current & Upcoming
To commemorate Singapore’s 60th year of independence (SG60), What the Brush Remembers – 60 Years of Creativity and Heritage presents a curated selection of artworks by renowned Singaporean artists. This exhibition, held at OCBC Wisma Atria, offers a unique opportunity to reflect on Singapore’s artistic evolution over the past six decades.
Featuring works by Chua Ek Kay (b.1947), Han Sai Por (b.1943), Kumari Nahappan (b.1953), Lin Hsin Hsin (b.1952), Ng Yak Whee (b.1954), and Tan Choh Tee (b.1942). These artists have not only shaped the local art landscape but have also made significant contributions to the international art scene. The exhibition showcases the dynamic interplay of tradition, innovation, and cultural identity in Singaporean art.
Singapore’s journey over the past 60 years has been defined by resilience, multiculturalism, and forward-thinking progress. This exhibition mirrors that journey through three thematic sections:
Tradition and heritage – Showcasing early works that incorporate traditional artistic influences and reflect Singapore’s cultural roots.
Transition and fusion – Highlighting how artists blend diverse cultural elements to create new artistic expressions.
Modernity and innovation – Exploring contemporary artistic practices that push boundaries and embrace new materials and technologies.
By tracing this artistic evolution, the exhibition celebrates how Singapore’s cultural landscape has shaped and been shaped by its artists.
What the Brush Remembers: 60 Years of Creativity and Heritage
Prestige Art Gallery x OCBC Bank
📍Singapore
01 Jul 2025 - 31 Dec 2025
Traces of Time: 60 Years of Nationhood - A Singapore Art Exhibition
Level 2, Public Art Space at Pan Pacific Singapore
📍Singapore
4 Jun - 31 Aug 2025
In celebration of Singapore's 6oth anniversary this year, Pan Pacific Singapore and Nanman Art are proud to present an exhibition showcasing the remarkable works of five distinguished artists: Lim Tze Peng, Peh Eng Seng, Wan Soon Kam, and Kumari Nahappan-four iconic figures from Singapore's second generation of artists-alongside specially invited guest artist Qu Jinzhong from China.
Active since the early days of Singapore's nation-building, these artists have witnessed and documented the evolving identity of the country. Their works, ranging from oil painting and Chinese ink, to watercolour, calligraphy, and sculpture, capturing the soul of a young nation through personal expression and cultural storytelling.
This exhibition is a reflection of Singapore's journey - a visual celebration of six decades of artistic and national development. Join us in exploring these timeless works that reflect the spirit, struggles, and aspirations of Singapore.
SinGa60: SINGART Urban Expressions, Delicately Grand
Forum Art Gallery
📍Chennai, India
1 Aug - 10 Aug 2025
Delicately Grand is a special showcase of Kumari Nahappan’s iconic public sculptures, presented as intimate maquettes in celebration of SinGa60. These miniature works invite audiences to experience the monumental presence of her art up close, highlighting the elegance, symbolism, and storytelling that have defined her practice across decades.
Kumari’s sculptures—seen in landmark sites from Orchard Road to international cityscapes—draw from natural forms and cultural motifs, weaving together ideas of ritual, heritage, and transformation. In Delicately Grand, the smaller scale allows viewers to encounter these works as touchstones of memory and imagination, revealing the meticulous process and vision behind each public installation.
As part of SinGa60, which marks sixty years of India–Singapore ties, this exhibition celebrates the shared cultural currents that inspire Kumari’s art. Just as the festival honours enduring connections in trade, diplomacy, and community, Delicately Grand reflects the harmony between tradition and contemporary expression—a testament to creativity as a bridge between nations and generations.
Chromatic Currents
Pristine Contemporary
📍New Delhi, India
12 Sep 2025
For over three decades, Kumari Nahappan’s artistic practice has traversed the intersections of colour, materiality, and cosmology, mapping a terrain where form and energy coalesce. Chromatic Currents offers a synesthetic journey through her oeuvre, framing colour not as a static attribute but as a force that shapes and transforms meaning across time and space. Across the mediums and materials she works with, her artworks articulate an evolving language of material and myth.
Colour is not merely pigment in Nahappan’s universe; it is rhythm, vibration, and emotion. It is a bridge between the sacred and the everyday, a medium through which the artist channels the ineffable forces of the cosmos. While deeply rooted in Hindu cosmology—where celestial bodies dictate the hues of the Navagraha and chromatic frequencies chart the energies of the universe—Nahappan’s use of colour resists rigid codification. It oscillates between cultural specificity and universal resonance, inviting viewers into a meditation on perception, memory, and transcendence.
Nahappan activates the sensorial dimensions of art, where texture, weight, and scent become integral to the experience. At its core, Chromatic Currents challenges us to reconsider colour not as a surface quality but as a structuring principle of experience, one that transcends linguistic and cultural barriers. Whether as a ritual gesture, a cosmic signal, or a field of pure energy, Nahappan’s universe reminds us that colour is not simply seen—it is felt, remembered, and lived.
Recent Exhibitions
In Her Hands
📍Prestige Art Gallery
8 Mar 2025 - 20 Apr 2025
In Her Hands brings together the works of Han Sai Por, Kumari Nahappan, and Kanoko Takaya—three female artists who explore identity, creativity, and ecological consciousness through sculpture, painting, installation, and photography. Their art becomes a dialogue between nature and culture, revealing the profound impact of societal development on the environment.
As globalization and technology reshape our world, nature emerges in their works not as backdrop but as living subject—resilient, fragile, and in flux. Han’s stone sculptures evoke life’s quiet persistence, Kumari’s vivid forms bridge cultural symbolism and ecology, while Kanoko’s layered installations reflect memory and the human psyche within the natural realm.
Rooted in diverse cultural experiences, each artist reimagines our relationship with the natural world. In Her Hands is both an homage to female creativity and a call to reawaken ecological empathy—reminding us that in caring for nature, we shape not only our world, but ourselves.
Whitestone Gallery is pleased to present Happy Together: Visions of Gladness from Southeast Asia, an exhibition that brings the question of happiness to life through the eyes of five contemporary Southeast Asian artists, each offering a vibrant and imaginative take on joy. This captivating exhibition invites audiences to explore how happiness is expressed, shared, and celebrated across cultures. From immersive installation to bold visual expression, it captures the rich emotional landscape of Southeast Asia—where laughter, tradition, and togetherness converge.
Each artwork radiates a sense of joy, offering fresh glimpses into everyday joys and festive moments. Playful and poignant in equal measure, the exhibition is filled with humor, cultural reflection, and imaginative takes on what it means to be together. The featured artists reveal happiness not as a fleeting emotion, but as something intentionally nurtured - shaped by the strength found in unity, even and adversity.
Happy Together
Whitestone Gallery
📍Singapore
08 Jun 2025 - 27 Jul 2025
Tropic of Perception
Ames Yavuz Gallery
📍Singapore
10 May 2025 - 21 Jun 2025
Tropic of Perception explores how perception is shaped by shifting environments, cultural narratives, and sensory experiences. Focusing on states of flux and transformation, the exhibition considers how these forces influence memory, identity, and the way knowledge is formed.
Rather than a geographical reference, the title points to an internal terrain—a psychological and emotional space where perception is unstable and continuously reconfigured. Through diverse media, the featured artists engage with material and immaterial elements, examining the tensions between the real and the imagined.
The exhibition invites viewers to reflect on how their perceptions are shaped: How do our surroundings, histories, and embodied experiences mediate what we see and understand? In a time of accelerating change—technological, ecological, and social—Tropic of Perception positions perception as both fragile and powerful: a process of ongoing negotiation. It is a space where reality is not fixed, but fluid—shifting, constructed, and constantly open to revision.
Call of the Season
📍 The Sanchaya
25 Apr 2025
Call of the Season transforms The Sanchaya in Bintan into a living gallery where Kumari Nahappan’s sculptures celebrate nature’s rhythms, cultural heritage, and the cycles of abundance. Across the estate, her works invite guests to reflect and connect with the stories embedded in familiar yet symbolically rich forms.
From the joyous Dancing Queen I & II, where pineapples curtsy in celebration of prosperity and hospitality, to the luminous Golden Rice Grain, magnifying an everyday staple into a radiant emblem of sustenance, each piece carries layers of meaning. Cosmic Conches: Bounty of the Sea stretches along the beachfront, its black-and-white conches evoking spiritual energy and the bounty of ocean life. Meanwhile, Echoes of Red pairs fiery bronze chilies with monumental saga seeds, their mirrored reflections in water evoking renewal, memory, and connection.
Through Call of the Season, Kumari Nahappan bridges nature and culture, offering a meditative journey that honors abundance, tradition, and life’s enduring cycles.
Light to Night Festival 2024, Reimagine
2024’s Light to Night Singapore festival, Reimagine, spearheaded by National Gallery Singapore, invites visitors to engage with art and space in new and innovative ways, which spark creativity and encourage reflection.
Wings of Change by Kumari Nahappan features an enormous saga seed, an object that has endless possibilities. Nahappan’s luminescent saga seed symbolizes energy and hope.
A Journey of Artistic Expression Across Continents
Kumari Nahappan is a leading contemporary artist in Southeast Asia, known for her vibrant works that draw on nature, ritual, and her cultural heritage. A bold voice in Southeast Asia’s contemporary art scene, Kumari transforms everyday natural elements into monumental sculptures and immersive installations. Her works have taken root across Singapore—from the glowing Nutmeg & Mace at ION Orchard to the 45-meter bronze mural Pembungaan—and bloomed far beyond in cities like Venice, Tokyo, and Manila. With a practice grounded in heritage but always reaching forward, Kumari continues to inspire, teach, and create with a flair that's uniquely her own.

“Meet the Singaporean who’s spicing up the art scene with her giant chillies”
As featured on Channel News Asia