SANTAI Series: Rumah Laut (Coastal Home)

SANTAI Series: Rumah Laut (Coastal Home)

• When:

  9 Jan - 31 Jan 2026
• Time:

  10am-midnight
• Where:

  Along Coleman Street, Art Connector Asian Civilisations Museum, ACM Green, Padang

Rumah Laut (Coastal Home) is a three-part installation that reimagines the legacy, displacement, and resilience of Singapore’s Indigenous Orang Laut communities, including the Orang Gelam, Orang Kallang, Orang Seletar and Orang Selat.

Situated at The Art Connector, Padang and ACM Green, the work reflects on histories of navigation, dwelling, and subsistence that have been progressively eroded through urbanisation, land reclamation, and the loss of access to coastal spaces. Together, the installation responds to both the tangible and intangible losses experienced by these communities over the past few decades of culture, space, knowledge and belonging.

At the Art Connector, the work takes the form of a constellation-inspired light path, recalling how the Orang Laut once navigated the seas guided by the stars. Installed along this sheltered linkway connecting City Hall MRT to the National Gallery Singapore, the work combines light and textile elements, featuring reimagined identity emblems rendered on fabric. These emblems draw from the visual language and symbols of different coastal communities.

Situated within a contemporary urban artery, the piece invites city dwellers to reimagine the unseen pathways of Singapore’s earliest navigators—the original custodians of these waters and shores whose movements and ways of life have largely been rendered invisible within the modern city.

At the Padang, the artist presents a contemporary reimagining of the rumah laut as a large-scale sculptural form. The work is informed by a deconstruction of materials traditionally integral to coastal dwellings: kajang, woven leaves used by nomadic sea communities as shelter; mengkuang or nipah (palm) leaves, historically used for walls and roofing; and bakau (mangrove) wood, which formed the primary structural support.

Recontextualised within the Padang—historically a civic space for gathering, assembly and communal life—the rumah laut becomes both a place of rest and a site of remembrance. It stands as a response to the erosion of coastal homes and lifeways, foregrounding the loss of physical space, cultural practices and access to the sea that once sustained island communities.

At ACM Green, the installation draws connections between the Singapore River’s history as a centre of maritime commerce and the lived traditions of coastal communities. Referencing the Asian Civilisations Museum’s Maritime Trade Gallery, the work centres on the heritage and craft of bubu makers. Bubu are traditional fishing traps that represent a sustainable and intimate relationship with the marine environment, developed through generations of knowledge and practice. This site-specific work functions as a symbolic homage to a rapidly disappearing craft, while evoking ideas of protection, continuity and spiritual connection to land and water. Through the form and presence of the bubu, the installation gestures towards what is at stake: the fragile interdependence between people, culture and ecology and what must be safeguarded, both materially and immaterially, for future generations.

Collaborators: Members of the Orang Suku Laut & Orang Seletar communities, Syafiee Ayub, Toufiq Andry, Abu Fikrah, Aqilah Mazromi, Jefree Salim, Hamzah Mohamad, Elizabeth Tan, Hannah Bock

About SANTAI

SANTAI is a new series commissioned specially for the tenth edition of Light to Night Singapore. In response to the theme of "The Power in Us" and drawing from the Malay word "santai" (to relax), the series features artworks that invite audiences to the act of gathering for a collective artistic experience.

Located at five key gathering points within the Civic District (the Padang, Empress Lawn, Front Lawn at The Arts House, ACM Green and Esplanade Park) these artworks explore themes such as the impact of language, the call to reimagine our histories and the power of collaboration through immersive, participatory and co-creative ways of experiencing art.