Cui Jie’s latest commissioned work, Thermal Landscapes (2025), is presented at the 2025 Singapore Biennale, themed “Pure Intention.” As the eighth edition of the Singapore Biennale, this exhibition transforms everyday spaces into vibrant platforms for contemporary art, showcasing over 100 works including 30 new commissioned pieces.

This biennial exhibition is curated by Duncan Bass, Hsu Fang-Tze, Selene Yap, and Ong Puay Khim. It is organized by the Singapore Art Museum (SAM) and commissioned by the National Arts Council Singapore (National Arts Council SG).

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Cui Jie, Thermal Landscapes, 2025

Thermal Landscapes is inspired by watchtowers built in Singapore. Unlike structures designed for colonial surveillance or military reconnaissance, these watchtowers were seen as hallmarks of modernisation, offering a vantage point to showcase the city’s rapid urbanisation. The work explores the nuanced connections between architectural functions and utopian aspirations. In this painting, buildings which were once lauded for being the tallest in their city seemingly blend into statues of human and animal forms, which recall kitsch ceramic figurines popular in the mid-20th century. In juxtaposing the once landmarks of progress with sentimental decorative objects of careless quality, Thermal Landscapes reflects on what remains of icons of development, modernist architecture and home. As we step back to behold the mural in its entirety, these symbols of a city appear drifting in a vast ocean, connected by a network of “undersea cables” and punctuated with diminished motifs of land. Here, a metaphor for the flow of ideologies emerges alongside the implied intertwining and causal relationship between ideologies and transformation of both the built and natural environments.

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Special thanks to Tanoto Art Foundation (TAF).

Image and text courtesy of the artist, Singapore Art Museum (SAM), Singapore Biennial 2025 and Antenna Space.

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Singapore Biennale 2025: Pure Intention

2025.10.31-2026.3.29

Cui Jie ‘s work presented at Gallery 1, Singapore Art Museum.