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Our Artists
Earthly Echoes
2026
Dried clay, sand, plaster, concrete, blue foam, acrylic paint, epoxy resin, ceramic shards (from Istana Kampong Gelam)
Commissioned by Malay Heritage Centre
NEO_ARTEFACTS reassembles traces of Istana Kampong Gelam’s past, including ceramic shards previously excavated from the grounds, and brings them back to life through the sculptural forms of Earthly Echoes, reminiscent of soil layers beneath the ground.
How does your artwork relate to what heritage means to you?
“This work is inspired by the excavations done at Istana Kampong Gelam and the process of soil collecting over time. I hope to encourage visitors to look closely at the objects and consider the narratives they carry in relation to the ongoing impact of cultural interaction on our shared heritage.
The soil and ceramic shards beneath Istana Kampong Gelam hold layers of history that are easy to overlook. Set alongside modern materials, they become part of a new structure. Even in fragments, the past remains a living part of how we understand where we come from."
About NEO_ARTEFACTS
Initiated by Fazleen Karlan (b.1993, Singapore), NEO_ARTEFACTS is an experimental that looks into the intersection between art and archaeology. Drawing from her past experience as a post-excavation technician, NEO_ARTEFACTS seeks to reassemble fragments of material from different timeframes, constructing personal and cultural realities. NEO_ARTEFACTS has presented in several group exhibitions in Singapore and was an Artist-in-Residence with NTU Centre for Contemporary Art between April - August 2022.
Our New Home
2026
Mixed media collage (acrylic, batik pieces) puppets, rattan, wire, and mixed media collage on canvas (newspaper, cardboard palette)
Commissioned by Malay Heritage Centre
Renowned batik artist Tumadi Patri takes on the mantle of a Pak Dalang (storyteller puppeteer), transforming this staircase into a stage for a housewarming feast. Join in the festivities in Our New Home alongside beloved characters from the Javanese wayang kulit tradition: Semar, his sons Petruk and Gareng, and nobilities including Arjuna, Srikandi and Raja Antaraja Gagak.
How does your artwork relate to what heritage means to you?
“Wayang kulit (shadow puppetry) is a heritage that today's generation must know as their own. I want to keep this art form alive by bringing them into a new home, where their shadows can continue to tell stories for generations to come.”
About Tumadi Patri
Tumadi Patri (b. 1959, Singapore) boasts an artistic career spanning almost four decades, and has been an active member of the Singaporean collective of Malay artists, Angkatan Pelukis Daya Aneka (APAD), since 1984. He has exhibited widely since then, with solo shows in 2014 and 2017.
Bintang Layar, Bintang Cipta
2026
7-minute film, fabric, mirror and dressing table
Commissioned by Malay Heritage Centre
Responding to the women-centred stories within the Permanent Galleries, Mysara Aljaru offers Bintang Layar, Bintang Cipta – a participatory installation blending film and history, spotlighting the achievements and challenges faced by Malay female filmmakers throughout history. As you take a seat at the dressing table belonging to fictional actress and almost-director Mariam Ratu, peek into the drawers for reflections penned by our local theatre practitioners and filmmakers including Shaza Ishak, Siti Khalijah, Fizah Nizam and others.
How does your artwork relate to what heritage means to you?
“The stories of women in our community may not always be rare or unsurprising to uncover, but often they are not given space to be seen or heard properly.
It feels important to carry these forward as part of our everyday understanding of history, as something whole rather than secondary.
And maybe it is less about uncovering something hidden, and more about learning how to see what has always been present, and letting that redefine how we understand our place, our voices, and what we choose to carry with us.”
About Mysara Aljaru
Mysara Aljaru (b.1993, Singapore) is a writer and artist. Previously a journalist and documentary producer, her works have been showcased across spaces in Singapore and Indonesia, where she looks into state-constructed narratives that cut across race, gender and class. She is also the co-editor of Brown Is Redacted, an anthology looking into minority experiences in Singapore.
SIPEMALU (Sistem Penyulitan Masyarakat Lupa) (The Forgotten Society’s Encryption Unit)
2026
Piano, repurposed drums, lampshades, radio, transmitters, and wires
Commissioned by Malay Heritage Centre
Sound carries with it a complexity that is at once felt and remembered – a similar affection we often have towards heritage and identities, which can also be deeply personal. Sonic artist Bani Haykal, invented SIPEMALU (The Forgotten Society’s Encryption Unit) as a way for us to preserve our thoughts and feelings by transforming them into sounds.
How does your artwork relate to what heritage means to you?
“SIPEMALU is part of a growing set of instruments / technologies I’ve been working on for a short story series where the internet has ceased to exist, leading a team of technologists to experiment with transmitting encrypted audio information via FM / AM / SW. This is done by inputting messages via a piano which is locally encrypted by a computer programme, which later gets broadcasted via radio frequencies. SIPEMALU also features 2 large marching band bass drums which have been upcycled to become speakers (these drums are inspired by another fairly common instrument within the Nusantara, the Bedok / Bedug), 2 makeshift parabolic microphones made out of metal lampshades, cymbal stands and electret condenser microphones and an old National radio with FM / AM capabilities.
I hope that visitors / users are moved to think beyond the existing systems of communication, that we can and should imagine, prototype and experiment with other ways / forms of communication which evades highly surveilled, extractive and repressive infrastructure, perhaps even contend or challenge the way technologies mediate how we communicate with one another; what do we actually really need to inform and be informed of one another?”
About Bani Haykal
As an artist and musician, bani’s (b.1985, Singapore) work revolves around human-machine relationships / intimacies, examining and reflecting on how tools and technologies have shaped and continue to shape our experiences from commuting to communicating, navigating places and people.
Manifestations of his research culminate into works of various forms including site-responsive installations, poetry and performance. In his capacity as a collaborator and a soloist, bani has participated in festivals including Other Futures (Netherlands), MeCA Festival (Japan), Wiener Festwochen (Vienna), Media/Art Kitchen (Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines and Japan) and Liquid Architecture (Australia / Singapore) among others.
with brozm, Anonymous Network Unit, Runtuhh and Aqil Akmal
kædæluwær§æk§§æk – The Xenographer's Index
2026
CGI, CAD alongside digital composites, with generated texts onto polyvinyl sticker on concrete
Commissioned by Malay Heritage Centre
[CLASSIFIED: INTERNAL EYES ONLY]
Site: 1.3029N, 103.8599E
Year: Undated
(The Xenographer’s Index) is a visual index compiled by xenographers from the Nusantara (or the Malay world), following their expedition to the parallel terrain of Nooantara.
A study of Nooantara’s strata and archaeological findings reveals its civilization’s deep resemblance to the cultural world of the Nusantara – framed as a confirmation rather than coincidence: the Nusantara was never one world. It was always many.
Yet, the Nooantarans have transcended the categories that structure human life: humanly bodies and wider biospheres; intellect and intuition; lands, waters and the virtual. Their heritage and identity also undergo constant and, ongoing transformation.
To describe this condition, the xenographers invented the term (pronounced ke-da-lu-waar-sakk-sakk), drawn from Nusantara languages: the Javanese word kedaluwar (expiry), and proto-Austronesian word saksak (compressed).
In response to the various themes and artefacts encountered in the Permanent Galleries, fyerool darma, together with his human and non-human collaborators, pulls us to join a group of space explorers from the Malay archipelago who are charting the fictional parallel universe of Nooantara. The entry point into this universe is 1.3029N, 103.8599E – geographic coordinates that match Malay Heritage Centre’s address at 85 Sultan Gate.
Through a series of imagined artefacts and their accompanying labels, visitors are invited to reflect on the meaning of heritage, especially of a future when the technological and the physical bleeds into one another; whose labour is recognised or omitted in how heritage is preserved; and what does it mean to keep heritage alive.
How does your artwork relate to what heritage means to you?
“kædæluwær§æk§§æk (The Xenographer's Index) began as a shared inquiry into 'classifications': What gets documented? What gets omitted? And who holds the authority to decide?
The work doesn’t illustrate a world so much as it opens many parallel spaces for one. Presenting this work at MHC is a natural extension of the inquiry itself. The Centre occupies a site with layered histories — of labour, the personal, communal, the strange, to the institutional — and that layering is already in conversation with what the Index is doing. We’re grateful for the opportunity to contribute to that ongoing conversation, and we hope visitors arrive with their own questions and leave with different ones.”
About fyerool darma, with brozm, Anonymous Network Unit, Runtuhh and Aqil Akmal
fyerool darma (b. 1987, Singapore) integrates sound, video, new media, sculpture, texts and craft practices into his object and material experimentations, which juxtapose the aesthetics and ideology of modernism alongside Southeast Asian cultures, histories, aesthetics, and politics. He has gradually developed a complex visual vocabulary that draws from sources including tangible and intangible Malay heritage, archives, the Internet, literature, popular culture, the history of craft, visual arts, manufacturing, and manual labour. Darma’s works have been exhibited at Centre of Heritage Art and Textiles, Hong Kong (2024); La Trobe Art Institute, Australia (2023); NTU ADM Gallery, Singapore (2023); Seoul MediaCity Biennale, Seoul Art Museum (2023); Singapore Art Museum (2023); National Gallery Singapore (2022-23), among others.
His collaborators for these projects include Brandon Tay or brozm (b. 1981, Singapore), who works across sculpture, installation, moving image, and speculative systems; Anonymous Network Unit, comprising of unnamed humans and computers; with typeface provided by Runtuhh Foundry and architectural view provided by Aqil Akmal.