Installation view of Apichatpong Weerasethakul & Guo-Liang Tan’s Two Who Remember the Sea (2025). Commissioned by Singapore Art Museum for Singapore Biennale 2025_ pure intention. Image courtesy of Rueangrith Suntisuk
Two Who Remember the Sea grows from the artists’ fascination with the spaces and rituals of the cinematic. Set against the lush greenery of Wessex estate, suspended silver fabric moves in the landscape like spectral figures. Choreographed with movements powered by the sun and wind, the work stages a scene that is open and dream-like. The abstract imagery on the fabric evokes a shadowy presence coming in and out of view with the opening and closing motion. This acts as a kind of screen and porous frame, which light and air can enter and pass through.
The kinetic installation invites a meditation on frames of all kinds, from the cinematic to the memorial, reflecting the way life and death, presence and absence continually animate each other. The cloth and its shifting forms are in part a remembrance of gentle, wandering ghosts shrouded in white and longing for human closeness. These subtle allusions to victims of violence, connecting folklore to political reality, are found in the mid-century illustrations of Thai artist and writer Hem Vejakorn. Rather than inhabiting darkness, the haunted screens in Two Who Remember the Sea are stirred by daylight, their energy drawn from the same source that sustains the natural life around them.
In collaboration with Rueangrith Suntisuk and Pornpan Arayaveerasid of Bangkok-based collective DuckUnit, commissioned and presented as part of Singapore Biennale 2025: pure intention.
Venue: Wessex Estate, Forested area behind Wilton Close
When: 22 Jan - 31 Aug 2026,
By: Singapore Art Museum (SAM)
