Loy Gallery Presents “SG60: To Build a Swing
Exhibition Update: June 2025
Curated by Lexing Zhang
8 August 2025 – 30 September 2025
LOY Contemporary Art Gallery
Tanglin Road & Armenian Street, Singapore
LOY Gallery is pleased to present SG60: TO BUILD A SWING, a group exhibition across its Tanglin Road and Armenian Street spaces, marking Singapore’s 60 years of growth and transformation.
Taking inspiration from To Build a Swing by the Persian poet Hafez, the exhibition reflects on both the playfulness of creation and the collective effort needed to shape the future. Just as Hafez speaks of gathering talented friends and using “golden saws, silver hammers, polished teakwood and strong silk rope” to build something meaningful, the artists in SG60 offer their own tools—ideas, materials and artistic vision—to construct new ways of seeing Singapore’s next chapter.
Together, their works explore the nation’s past, present and possibilities ahead, embracing both imagination and craftsmanship as essential forces in shaping what comes next. Like Hafez’s poetry, the message is one of agency: we carry all the ingredients to turn our existence into joy—it is up to us to mix them.
Curator Lexïng Zhang explains:
"Singapore’s journey has been shaped by resilience, diversity and a willingness to reimagine itself. This exhibition considers how creative expression can offer new ways of thinking about the future, building on what has come before."
As part of the exhibition, visitors are invited to reflect on the principles that have shaped Singapore and consider how they might contribute to the next chapter.
Akai Chew: The Future Lies in Ruins
Akai Chew’s work explores Singapore’s architectural memory and urban identity. With a background in urban planning, Chew considers how rapid redevelopment risks erasing not just buildings, but the visions they once embodied. Drawing on thinkers like Jacques Derrida and Fredric Jameson, his work reflects on how cities are shaped by both past ambitions and future anxieties.
For SG60, Chew presents Dreams of Postmodern Ruins (2019), a photographic series; Reclamation and Redemption (2022), a video-based work; and sculptural pieces including All Our Futures. These works are rooted in his reflections on the Golden Mile Complex, built in 1974 as a bold architectural vision. Through image, sound and material, Chew asks: what are we preserving, what are we losing—and what ghosts are we creating for the future?
Joanna Maneckji: Dreaming Big
Joanna Maneckji’s specially prepared new series is a celebration of resilience and creative renewal. Rooted in her 25-year journey in Singapore, Joanna’s collage work, rich with found materials and symbolic imagery, continues to explore the experience of female forms, and to encourage all of us to dream big, never shy away from challenges and Changes. The new works brought back the newsprint faces first seen in her award-winning piece That Blessed Mood (2024). For Maneckji, Singapore has offered sanctuary in nature, space for growth and the strength to heal.
Her three new works—Rhea’s Dream, Maria’s Heart and Hallowed Be Thy Name—draw on spiritual iconography, particularly the halo, which first appeared in the 300s BC in Zoroastrian depictions of Mithra, god of light. In these pieces, haloes, florals and textured fabrics elevate her subjects into saintly forms. Through this visual language, Maneckji invites viewers to find the sacred in the everyday and approach the future with creativity and care.
Wan Kyn Chai: Walking Memory, Shifting Light
Walkways, a new installation by Wan Kyn Chai, transforms GPS data from personal walking routes into a glowing sculptural form. Made from layered acrylic panels with a soft, frosted finish, and illuminated by internal projection mapping that visually traces each route, the work captures movement, memory and light in a delicate interplay between structure and emotion.
As part of SG60, this immersive piece invites viewers to experience Singapore’s spaces through a different lens—where architecture meets memory and past paths illuminate future journeys. It materialises personal and collective experiences into a tangible form, acting as a spatial archive of movement. Chai’s work reminds us that the story of a city is carried not only in its skyline, but in the quiet traces of those who walk it.