chapalang

Gunalan Nadarajan and Roopesh Sitharan

22 January 2026 to 1 February 2026

11:00AM - 7:00PM

Free admission

Artspace @ Helutrans Gallery 3, 39 Keppel Rd #01-05, Tanjong Pagar Distripark

Exhibition Contemporary Art Tanjong Pagar

Synopsis

Chapalang is a random and seemingly chaotic commingling of things haphazardly put together, and in this exhibition exemplifies cultural strategies and attitudes associated with 'making do'; making one's own the heterogeneity of technologies and things we inhabit. These creative reconfigurings and vernacular appropriations of technologies in Southeast Asia are gathered here to speculate on the radical potential of such cultural practices to unsettle and reimagine our relationship to the technological.

Artists

Haris Abadi

Giang Nguyen Hoang

Hoo Fan Chon

Witaya Junma

Mira Rizki Kurnia

Fendi Mazalan

Corinne de San Jose

Margaret Tan

Tisya Wong

Yang Jie

Curators
Gunalan Nadarajan
Roopesh Sitharan

Public programmes

Artist Panel Discussion
22 January 2026

7:30pm - 9pm
Free admission, register here

Participating artists: Corinne de San Jose, Haris Abadi, Witaya Junma, Mira Rizki Kurnia, Tisya Wong, Fendi Mazalan, Yang Jie, Hoo Fan Chon, Giang Nguyen Hoang, Margaret Tan

The artists from chapalang will talk about their works in discussion with curators, Gunalan Nadarajan and Roopesh Sitharan.

Hacking Readymades Workshop by Haris Abadi
24 January 2026
5pm - 7pm
Free admisssion, register here

Participating artists: Haris Abadi

Hacking Readymades examines the transformation of play into form, and form into system. Using a single everyday object (the clothespin), participants assemble makeshift structures that recall the improvisations of childhood and the inventiveness of the everyday. Instead of translating these constructions into full instruction manuals, participants will design the cover or poster of a hypothetical manual — the front-facing image, title, and visual identity that suggest how the object might be circulated, taught, or reproduced. This shifts the focus from technical instruction to the way creativity is framed, packaged, and made shareable. Through this process, the workshop explores how casual, playful constructions become formalised through naming, design, and visual language — turning play into a system of representation and the object into a communicable idea.

Curatorial Walkthrough by Gunalan Nadarajan and Roopesh Sitharan
25th January 2026, 11am - 12pm
31 January 2026, 1:30pm - 2:30pm

An Improvised Ensembl-age Workshop by Yang Jie
31 January, 2026
5pm - 7pm
Free registration, register here

Participating artists: Yang Jie

This workshop explores hacking, assemblage, and collective performance as methods for giving objects a second life. Developed within the context of Chapalang, an exhibition embracing messiness, hybridity, and the productive mixing of forms, the artist encourages participants to bring objects and technologies that are beloved, worn, damaged, or aged—items that carry history and memory, yet whose original purpose has shifted or faded. Through simple mechanical and electronic interventions, participants experiment with how these objects can be coaxed into movement: swaying, tapping, rotating, trembling, colliding. The workshop culminates in a collective kinetic soundscape installation: an improvised ensembl-age of misfit objects moving, chiming, and “dance” together; recovering new possibilities and meanings for these objects that were considered damaged or obsolete to collaboratively discover new purpose, uses and meaning-lessness.

Exhibition

Yao Qingmei: Steel Garden

ShanghART Singapore

13 Dec 2025 to 15 Feb 2026

Free admission

ShanghART Singapore, 9 Lock Road, #02-22, Gillman Barracks, Singapore 108937

Steel Garden by Yao Qingmei offers a focused yet expansive lens into her practice, foregrounding an artist whose observations of ritual, power, and lived experiences resonate far beyond their point of origin.

Exhibition

Elia Nurvista and Bagus Pandega: Nafasan Bumi ~ An Endless Harvest

Singapore Art Museum

16 Jan 2026 to 18 May 2026

Free during Singapore Art Week

Level 3, Gallery 3, SAM at Tanjong Pagar Distripark

Material Intelligence returns with Bagus Pandega and Elia Nurvista, whose works explore Indonesia's extractive economies, plantations, mining, and electric futures while envisioning uncertain tomorrows shaped by materials bound to them.