New perspectives on Southeast Asian artistic practices at National Gallery Singapore with Passion is Volcanic: Desire in Southeast Asian Art

A new exhibition exploring how desire, the body, and sexuality have shaped artistic expression across Southeast Asia.

National Gallery Singapore presents Passion is Volcanic: Desire in Southeast Asian Art (R18), a new exhibition that explores desire, the body, and sexuality as powerful forces shaping artistic expression across the region. 

Opening on 24 April 2026, the exhibition brings together over 70 works from the pre-modern to the contemporary, including regional loans. Spanning different periods and contexts, the exhibition offers a new perspective on Southeast Asian art, showing how pre-modern cultural narratives continue to shape contemporary artistic practices and how artists engage with identity, intimacy, and the human condition. 

As a leading visual arts institution in Southeast Asia, National Gallery Singapore continues to expand the scope of what a museum can meaningfully engage with. This exhibition underscores the Gallery’s commitment to presenting rigorous, thought-provoking programmes that invite audiences to encounter art in ways that are both intellectually grounded and deeply human.

Reframing desire in Southeast Asian art 

The exhibition title, “Passion is Volcanic”, draws inspiration from Nanyang artist Liu Kang’s 1953 essay Trip to Bali, in which he observed that erotic forms of desire could act as creative forces for questioning and change. Building on this idea, the exhibition approaches the erotic as a lived, felt experience that shapes how we think, know, and relate to others. Bringing together both canonical and lesser-known works, the exhibition re-examines how desire and the body have been represented across Southeast Asian art, revealing not only continuities and transformations over time, but also alternative perspectives that challenge dominant narratives of art history.

Passion is Volcanic positions desire as a vital force that shapes how we think, create, and respond to the world. Spanning pre-modern references to contemporary practices, the exhibition reveals how desire informs artistic expression across time, shaping ideas of identity, intimacy, and the human condition.

Dr Patrick Flores, Chief Curator and Project Director of the exhibition, says, “Art and desire have always been intertwined, yet conversations about pleasure and the body remain shielded in the region’s public sphere. Passion is Volcanic: Desire in Southeast Asian Art engages with these themes in a considered and meaningful way and demonstrates how complex subjects can be approached with intellectual rigour and curatorial care. This exhibition invites us to look beyond familiar or simplified ideas of the erotic, exploring how desire is not fixed, but shaped by culture, history, and power. It opens up a more layered understanding of Southeast Asian art, one that centres lived, embodied experience as a vital force in artistic practice.”

Spanning painting, sculptural installation, photography, and video, the exhibition brings together a diverse range of artists and practices, examined through the lens of the erotic, with focused spotlights on key figures and movements. It invites visitors to reflect on how representations of the body and desire shape not only artistic practices, but also how we understand identity, intimacy, and the spaces we inhabit.

Tracing how artists have portrayed the human body through shifting ideas of desire

Organised across three sections – Asian Mythos and Ritual, Conventions of the Erotic, and Public Arenas/Private Interiors – the exhibition traces how desire has been expressed, contested, and reimagined across different cultural and historical contexts. 

The exhibition opens with Asian Mythos and Ritual, exploring how the erotic has long been embedded in spiritual and cosmological narratives, where desire intersects with power, transformation, and the divine. Works in this section invite visitors to see the body as a bridge between the human and the sacred, where emotion, nature, and spiritual ideas converge. 

The next section, Conventions of the Erotic, examines how artists have reworked the body and its representation, challenging inherited traditions and redefining the aesthetics of desire in postcolonial Southeast Asia. Works by artists such as Liu Kang, Nhek Dim, Bagi Aung Soe, and Basoeki Abdullah show how the nude was used as a symbol of liberation and modernity. Other artists such as Alfonso Ossorio, Sharifah Fatimah, and Lim Chong Keat moved beyond academic realism to explore new expressive and symbolic forms within postcolonial contexts.

The exhibition's concluding section, Public Arenas/Private Interiors, explores how artists engage with sexuality, identity, and social norms, bringing intimate and often marginalised experiences into public discourse. Set against rapidly changing social and cultural contexts in the late 20th century, artists began to reimagine desire in response to shifting moral boundaries, the rise of mass media, and the effects of globalisation. In these works, the intimate and the public intersect, explicit imagery becomes a form of critique, while feminist practices reclaim agency and challenge the objectification of the body. This section also highlights the presence of diverse voices in Singapore’s art history and reflects how contemporary practices have expanded representations of the body across painting, installation, performance, and photography.

Together, these sections reveal how artists across Southeast Asia, including those in regional collections, have explored themes of desire not only as subject matter, but also as a way to examine norms, express perspectives and imagine different ways of being.

Passion is Volcanic: Desire in Southeast Asian Art at National Gallery Singapore

Passion is Volcanic: Desire in Southeast Asian Art (R18) will be on view from 24 April to 30 August 2026 at the Level 4 Gallery, National Gallery Singapore. The exhibition is rated R18 and intended for visitors aged 18 and above; valid identification will be required at entry. Passion is Volcanic: Desire in Southeast Asian Art is a ticketed exhibition, with tickets priced at $5 for Singapore Citizens and Permanent Residents, and $8 for other nationalities. For more information, please refer to the attached annex or visit our website at www.nationalgallery.sg/PassionisVolcanic.

Media assets are available through this link. 

• Annex A: Sections and Key Artworks

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