EVENTS

Material Encounters: Stories of a Cosmopolis brings together eight contemporary artists from across Asia and beyond whose practices engage with material, place, and memory to navigate an increasingly interconnected world.

The exhibition takes the idea of the cosmopolis—a world of multiple centres, shaped by movement, exchange and coexistence—as a starting point. The artists work across different geographies and cultural contexts. Yet, their practices converge in shared interests: the agency of materials, the traces of migration, and the layered histories embedded in everyday objects, landscapes and built environments.

Through painting, sculpture, installation, fabric and mixed media, the works in the exhibition reveal how materials carry stories—of displacement and belonging, of ecological transformation, of cultural translation and hybrid identities. Some works draw on traditional knowledge and craft, while others rework industrial, archival or found materials, inviting new readings of the relationships between the local and the global, the personal and the collective.

Material Encounters is not a singular narrative, but a constellation of perspectives. Together, the works suggest that in a time of uncertainty, cosmopolitanism is not an abstract ideal but a lived condition—shaped through encounters, negotiations and the continual remaking of worlds, material by material.

Participating artists: Sanae Yamada (Japan), Nisa R. A. (Indonesia), Hung Hao-Lun (Taiwan), Alison Lam (United Kingdom), Nora Foo (Malaysia), Eng-Seong Lim (Malaysia), Suzy Sulaiman (Malaysia), Tini Haron (Malaysia) and Ally Cher (Malaysia).

Curated by Kenneth Wong See Huat (Founder, People Ideas Culture)