For this edition, ground zero is staged at Tanjong Pagar Distripark, where levels one, three and five of the building are hosting a wide variety of works by artists from Singapore, Southeast Asia, the Asia-Pacific, the Middle East, Europe, and the Americas. This includes blue chip names such as Haegue Yang, Araya Rasdjarmrearnsook, Cevdet Erek, and Wu Mali, as well as rising Singapore stars like Berny Tan and Ong Kian Peng.

While there are many things to ogle over, what is notable is that for this year’s biennale, the curators have also included remnants from the artists’ creative process, rather than just the usual finalised work.

Take for example rising Cambodian artist Kanitha Tith’s Hut Tep Soda Chan (Hut of an Angel) (pictured), which documents the effects of economic and social change in modern-day Cambodia. Alongside the main installation, various drawings of the artist’s day-to-day life are also present throughout the space – allowing audiences to get a more holistic understanding of how the work came to be.

If you’ve been following updates on the SB, you’ll know that other offbeats locations for the event include Sentosa Cove, St John’s Island, Lazarus Island, as well as regional libraries and Yan Kit Playfield in Tanjong Pagar.

The immediate association that came to mind when we first heard artworks would be staged on these islands was that of larger festivals like Japan’s famous Setouchi Triennale, which successfully revitalised a group of isolated islands in the inland sea of Seto and transformed the area into a major international art destination.

It is rather unusual for artworks to be staged out on Singapore’s smaller islands but here’s hoping they are a harbinger of more things to come. If you can only pick one, we’d say head to St John’s Island to visit artist Zarina Muhammad’s lovely Moving Earth, Crossing Water, Eating Soil work (pictured), an audio-visual-tactile installation that creates a sense of child-like discovery through how it invites visitors to reorient their senses to the coordinates of “unruly spaces on maps”.

Natasha is organised by the Singapore Art Museum (SAM), and the latter has consistently aimed to bring art beyond the traditional white cube and into everyday spaces. Aside from the artworks found on the Southern Islands, various arms of the biennale can also be found in places like the commercial-use building International Plaza, the tourist attraction Singapore Flyer and 22 Orchard Road (a shophouse in-between Plaza Singapura and The Cathay).

“The additions of International Plaza, the Singapore Flyer and 22 Orchard Road as spaces for art takes the experience of Natasha into unexpected places, and probes audiences to change their perspectives through art,” says the curatorial team.

At International Plaza, for instance, check out The Library of Unread Books, a portable collection of over 700 books initiated by artists Heman Chong and Renee Staal, where visitors are encouraged to donate unread books. The library is intended as a common shared resource – the books are accessible to anyone who can visit the library sites.

At press time, not all works had yet to be revealed, such as a massive sub-project titled Islandwide Coverage by the art collective AWKNDAFFR (Wayne Lim and
Soh Kay Min), which spans six diverse locations, taking audiences from the Singapore Flyer to regional libraries (Woodlands, Tampines and Jurong) in the heartlands.

The works are said to be highly personal, reacting and transforming to each of their respective locations – which appears to be quite symbolic of the introspective direction of this year’s SB. Details will be out on the biennale’s website and social media channels in coming weeks, so do keep an eye out for those.