PASSION IS VOLCANIC | National Gallery Singapore
Passion is Volcanic: Desire in Southeast Asian Art at National Gallery Singapore is a groundbreaking exhibition exploring desire, sexuality and the human body in Southeast Asian art. Co-curated by Kathleen Ditzig and Adele Tan, the exhibition brings together some 70 artworks spanning centuries, from pre-modern religious imagery to contemporary painting, photography, sculpture, installation and performance. Through an unusually bold and expansive curatorial approach, it examines how desire has shaped artistic expression across the region, challenging established narratives about gender, identity, intimacy and the relationship between private experience and public life.
Organised around three themes, Asian Mythos and Ritual, Conventions of the Erotic and Public Arenas/Private Interiors, the exhibition considers the erotic not simply as a subject in art, but as a powerful means of understanding cultural histories, social conventions and political change. It explores everything from the spiritual significance of desire in Buddhist and Hindu traditions to changing representations of the body in modern art, and the emergence of feminist and LGBTQ+ perspectives in societies where sexuality and gender identity remain sensitive and often contested subjects.
What makes Passion is Volcanic so important is not simply the subject matter, but the willingness of its curators and National Gallery Singapore to address these questions within a major public institution. In a region where conversations about sexuality, gender and queer identity can be sensitive, the exhibition opens up space for perspectives and histories that have often remained outside mainstream institutional narratives.
The exhibition has also attracted significant international critical attention, including being shortlisted for Apollo’s Exhibition of the Year, recognition of its contribution to contemporary curatorial discourse.
For me, Passion is Volcanic demonstrated the importance of institutions willing to take curatorial risks and reconsider how art history is told. It was an honour to contribute to broader recognition of the richness, complexity and continuing relevance of Southeast Asian art and to support in the international communication and media outreach of such a daring and important exhibition, which did not lend itself to easy interpretations or uncomplicated responses.