Power is not always loud. Sometimes, it shows up as care, craft, and community.
National Gallery Singapore opens 2026 with Fear No Power: Women Imagining Otherwise, an exhibition that spotlights five groundbreaking Southeast Asian artists whose work pushed back against artistic and social norms across decades. Opening on January 9, 2026, the show brings together over 45 major artworks and more than 110 rarely seen archival materials, many shown in Singapore for the first time.
Five Southeast Asian women artists who redefined what art can do
At the heart of the exhibition are Amanda Heng, Dolorosa Sinaga, Imelda Cajipe Endaya, Nirmala Dutt, and Phaptawan Suwannakudt. Their practices span performance, photography, painting, sculpture, and more. But what connects them is purpose: each artist uses art to respond to real social and political pressures, while also building space for dialogue and collective care.
The show also feels timely because it doesn’t treat “women’s stories” as a niche sidebar. Instead, it places them where they belong: right at the center of Southeast Asian art history. As National Gallery Singapore’s Director of Curatorial & Collections, Lisa Horikawa, puts it, “Fear No Power foregrounds how women have long used artistic practice to respond to social and political realities.”
In their home countries, these artists are known not only for their work, but for how they shaped communities: as educators, writers, organisers, and advocates. That matters, because influence isn’t always about being the “most famous.” Sometimes it’s about who creates the conditions for others to make work, speak up, and keep going.
Three zones that move from the personal to the collective
The exhibition title comes from Dolorosa Sinaga’s sculpture Fear No Power (2003), and the idea of “power” here is intentionally bigger than politics. The Gallery notes that “‘power’ not only refers to the political and authoritarian, but to one’s own inner strength.” That shift is the point. This is a show about what people do with strength, especially when society expects them to shrink.
To guide visitors through the artists’ practices, the exhibition unfolds across three interconnected zones:
- Where the Body Thinks, Worlds Open begins with lived experience. Think memory, domestic space, artistic inheritance, and the everyday realities of gendered expectations.
- Refusal and Hope expands outward into public life, tracking how personal perspectives became responses to political, social, and environmental issues. The works point to inequality, displacement, and social change, while showing how resistance can look like persistence, truth-telling, and care.
- Imagining Otherwise closes with the long game: collectives, traditions, and support systems. It highlights how these artists built networks and spaces for dialogue and solidarity beyond individual artmaking.
That structure makes the exhibition easy to enter, even if you’re not the type who reads every wall text. You can follow a clear emotional logic: start with the personal, face the realities outside, then end with what we can build together.
If you’re planning a visit, here’s the practical part: Fear No Power: Women Imagining Otherwise runs from 9 January to 15 November 2026 at the Ngee Ann Kongsi Concourse Gallery, and entry is free for all visitors.
