The Living Room
Singapore Art Museum (SAM) presents its latest exhibition The Living Room, as part of the final chapter of Collection Project: Communicating, Convening, Commoning—a long-term collaboration between SAM, Seoul Museum of Art (SeMA), and Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art (QAGOMA). Housed at SAM’s refreshed collection gallery, the exhibition brings together performance-based works from the collections of all three institutions to explore how performances – fleeting by nature – can be remembered, reactivated, and carried forward through different forms of engagement. At its heart is a central question: What happens to a performance when it ends? Where does its liveness go, and how might we make sense of what remains?
Featuring works by renowned local and international artists such as Ezzam Rahman, Chuyia Chia, Kim Garam, Brian Fuata and others, The Living Room presents a breadth of practices spanning live performances, video, installation, performance traces, re-enactments, and artist-led activations. Taking inspiration from the living room as a space for gathering and presence, the exhibition invites visitors into an evolving environment that is brought to life through activation, conversation, and exchange. By bringing together works grounded in lived experience, The Living Room opens new ways of understanding how performance lives on through objects, memory, interaction, and shared encounters.
The Living Room is showcased alongside Talking Objects at SAM’s collection gallery. Together, they create a reflective space where personal and collective experiences converge, offering insights into individual narratives and broader social and cultural conditions.
