Programme Schedule:

2–2.15pm: Introduction by exhibition curators, June Yap & Kathleen Ditzig
2.15–3.15pm: In Conversation with Heman Chong and Pauline J. Yao
3.15–4.00pm: Book Signing

This programme is presented in conjunction with the exhibition, This is a dynamic list and may never be able to satisfy particular standards for completeness.

Speakers Biographies

Pauline J. Yao is an independent curator and writer based in Hong Kong. From 2017 to 2024 she was Lead Curator (Visual Art) at M+. Since joining the M+ curatorial team in 2012, Yao played an integral role in building the museum’s collection and acquiring works of art from East Asia, Southeast Asia and internationally. She curated the first display of the visual art collection exhibition Individuals, Networks, Expressions and Antony Gormley: Asian Field, both on view at the grand opening of M+ in 2021. Other exhibitions include In Search of Southeast Asia through the M+ Collections (with Shirley Surya, 2018) and Five Artists: Sites Encountered (2019), both presented at the M+ Pavilion. From 2008–2019, Yao helped run Arrow Factory, an independent art space in Beijing. She is a regular contributor to Artforum International and has published widely on contemporary Asian art in various catalogues, online publications and edited volumes.

Heman Chong is an artist whose work is located at the intersection between image, performance, situations and writing. Characterised by acerbic wit, Chong’s art addresses contemporary geopolitics and the infrastructural ironies of our data-driven and networked society. His practice can be read as an imagining, interrogation and sometimes intervention into infrastructure as an everyday medium of politics. His work has been the subject of institutional solo exhibitions at Singapore Art Museum, UCCA Dune, STPI, Het Nieuwe Instituut, Weserburg Museum, Jameel Arts Center, Swiss Institute New York, Art in General, Artsonje Center, Rockbund Art Museum, South London Gallery, and NUS Museum, amongst many others. Chong is the co-director and founder (with Renée Staal) of The Library of Unread Books, a library made up of donated books previously unread by their owners. It was recently installed in the Serpentine Pavilion 2024, designed by Minsuk Cho and in 2025, installed for the summer at MOT, Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo.

Exhibition Curators

June Yap is Director of Curatorial & Research at Singapore Art Museum, where she oversees content and research development. Amongst exhibitions she has curated are: Heman Chong: This is a dynamic list and may never be able to satisfy particular standards for completeness; Yee I-Lann: Mansau-Ansau; the Singapore Biennale 2022 named Natasha; The Gift as part of Collecting Entanglements and Embodied Histories; No Country: Contemporary Art for South and Southeast Asia for the Guggenheim UBS MAP Global Art Initiative; Ho Tzu Nyen’s The Cloud of Unknowing at the 54th Venice Biennale. She is the author of Retrospective: A Historiographical Aesthetic in Contemporary Singapore and Malaysia (2016).

Kathleen Ditzig is Curator at National Gallery Singapore. She received a PhD from Nanyang Technological University with a dissertation titled, “Exhibiting Southeast Asia in the Cultural Cold War: Geopolitics of Regional Art Exhibitions (1940s–1980s).” She obtained her MA from the Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College. Inspired by her experience in cultural policy, Ditzig studies modern and contemporary Southeast Asian art in relation to global histories of capitalism, technology and international relations. As a curator and researcher, she is invested in advancing and interrogating art as an exceptional site and system of speaking to power. She won an IMPART Curatorial Award in 2021. Her writing has been published by Southeast of Now (NUS Press), Journal of Social Issues in Southeast Asia (NUS Press), Afterall (University of the Arts London), post: Notes on art in a global context (MoMA), Art Agenda and Art Forum, among others.

About the Publication

Title: Heman Chong: This is a dynamic list and may never be able to satisfy particular standards for completeness

Retail price: SGD55.00 incl. GST

ISBN: 978-981-17596-5-9

A key artist in Singapore’s art history, Heman Chong’s multi-faceted practice dates back to the early 2000s. This publication accompanies a survey exhibition of the same name, which presents recent artworks including new commissions that reconsider canonical pieces from his oeuvre. Known for his acerbic wit, Chong’s art addresses contemporary geopolitics and the infrastructural ironies of our data-driven and networked society. Heman Chong: This is a dynamic list and may never be able to satisfy particular standards for completeness surveys the artist’s practice, with essays by international curators who have collaborated with him throughout his career.

Click here to purchase the book online.