SANTAI at L4 Gallery

SANTAI at L4 Gallery

• When:

  9 - 31 Jan 2026
• Time:

  Fri-Sun: 10am-11pm and Mon-Thu: 10am-7pm
• Where:

  National Gallery Singapore, City Hall Wing, Level 4 Gallery

Sit back, relax, and let’s SANTAI.

Featuring four multimedia works previously presented by Amanda Tan and Irsyad Ishak, thoughtfully situated alongside intimate spaces for rest and gathering, SANTAI at Level 4 Gallery invites audiences to engage with experiential works, encounter moments of quiet reflection and relaxation within a shared environment. The artworks on exhibit are:

Stillness and Neutrality in a Chaotic World

This is a process-driven work that reflects on the place of the human in the great cosmic carnival of existence. An illuminated feminine figure visually anchors the work, serving as a symbol for humankind. Around them, lush images generated through thermal and microscopic imaging techniques play in a frenzied montage. The work melds meticulously crafted live action sequences with experimental aleatory image-making techniques, using light as a metaphorical device to cut through the fog of chaos and disorder clouding the human condition.

The Absence of Shadow Is

This interactive media installation studies the tensions between presence and absence, and identity and difference through light projections designed to emulate “inverse shadows.” A camera relays visual information about the installation’s surroundings to a computer vision programme, which picks out humanoid figures. “Shadows” are then generated and projected onto the ground in front of those figures in real time and are typically defined by the absence of light. In casting the shadow as a body of trailing light, the work upends the natural state of things, inviting visitors to reflect on the imprints humans leave on the world, as well as on the nonhuman accoutrements that indelibly pervade human life. 

Refold/Misfold

This work features a two-channel film composed of five vignettes that address the tensions between the concepts of predestination and free will. In each vignette, a singular agent presented in one channel is “folded in” upon itself in the second channel to reveal a multitude of other variations and possibilities. In presenting these twin realities simultaneously, the work questions the necessity of present states of affairs while inviting audiences to ponder other possible worlds and other ways of being. 

Tempo

This interactive media installation is composed of three screens and a micro-camera. The screens display the camera feed to viewers in real time with varying degrees of delay, inducing feelings of uncanniness and disorientation by rendering the viewer’s internal representations incongruent with their external reality. In artificially destabilising the linear relation between cause and effect, the work allows viewers to observe the flux of time and the nature of identity from a non-linear, extra- or trans-temporal (or “eternal”) vantage point, inviting them to contemplate the mysteries of time with a spirit of wonder and play.

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.