Singapore, 2 July 2025— Cuturi Gallery is proud to present Sixty Summers Here, celebrating a generation of ten young Singaporean artists in their 20s and 30s, whose practices embody the vitality and resilience of contemporary art-making. Marking Singapore’s 60th year of independence, the exhibition brings together works across painting, drawing, sculpture, and installation, with a focus on process and nuanced observations of everyday life. Their practices, rooted in care and creative rigour, offer quiet but powerful propositions for how art can persist, connect, and continue to evolve. Collectively, they signal not just what is emerging, but what is already here—and here to stay.

This exhibition is anchored by a line of inquiry structured around five open-ended questions: Who is here, what is here, where is here, when is here, and why here? These are not posed as rhetorical or diagnostic prompts, but as entry points for reflection.

The exhibition features Singaporean artists Aisha Rosli, Anna Du Toit, Casey Tan, Faris Heizer, Joel Seow, Marla Bendini, Oneal Parbo, Shen Jiaqi, Vanessa Liem, and Yom Bo Sung. Each artist presents a distinct perspective on what it means to create within the art scene today. What connects them is a shared attentiveness to their environments and a willingness to navigate ambiguity between comfort and restlessness, visibility and marginality, structure and improvisation. In the context of this commemorative year, the exhibition invites reflection on how artistic practices are shaped by place, time, and change. Rather than prescribing conclusions, Sixty Summers Here encourages viewers to slow down and attend to what is already unfolding. The works reflect a scene still in formation: sensitive, deliberate, and grounded in the present. Sixty Summers Here will be on view at 61 Aliwal Street, Singapore 199937, from 12 July to 8 August 2025.

Opening Performance by Marla Bendini: Conteng at 6 pm on July 12th

In the exhibition performance, Marla Bendini offers an act of communion—through movement, guzheng, and voice. Drawing from her tree rubbing works, she explores presence memory, and kinship with the land and more-than-human bodies.

The guzheng’s resonant strings and her voice become extensions of touch, sounding out what cannot be spoken, listening to what lingers. Each gesture is a ritual of care, rooted in slowness and reciprocity. A return to places once lived in, feelings once held, kinships yet to be fully known. It says: we were here, we are still here, and our stories are alive—held by the trees, the soil, and each other.

Venue
Singapore: 61 Aliwal Street, Singapore 199937

Artist
Aisha Rosli, Anna Du Toit, Casey Tan, Faris Heizer, Joel Seow, Marla Bendini, Oneal Parbo, Shen Jiaqi, Vanessa Liem, Yom Bo Sung

Exhibition Dates
July 12 – August 8, 2025

Opening Reception
Saturday, 12th July 2025, 5 pm till late

Contact
+65 6980 3069
singapore@cuturigallery.com
london@cuturigallery.com

About the Artists

Aisha Rosli (b. 1997, Singapore)

Singaporean artist Aisha Rosli graduated from the Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts (NAFA) with a Diploma in Fine Art (Western Painting) in 2018. She has had successful solo shows at Cuturi Gallery and was featured in several group exhibitions including OH! Open House in Singapore, Galerie LJ in Paris, Unit London in the UK, At The Table Group Show hosted by Christie’s, Harpers Gallery in New York, and ART SG in Singapore.

Referencing 20th century painters, Francis Bacon and Egon Schiele, as well as contemporaries such as Marlene Dumas, Rosli works within the tradition of figurative painting, driven by a mode of interrogation affixed to our bodily presence. Exploring themes of solitude, concealment, proximity, and desire, she presents figures inhabiting constructed scenes and situations that pander towards the uncanny.

Anna Du Toit (b. 2001, Singapore)

Singaporean artist Anna Du Toit is a 24-year-old multidisciplinary artist based in Singapore and a Fine Art graduate from The Ruskin School of Art, University of Oxford. Her work is inspired by her surroundings, focusing on unusual details and developing them into a new perspective. Her pieces range from detailed ballpoint drawings to larger sculptures that explore themes of home and identity, ultimately offering a surreal look at her personal connection to care.

Casey Tan (b. 1994, Singapore)

Casey Tan is a Singaporean painter whose works focus on visual metaphor and narrative. Drawing inspiration from everyday life, Tan reinterprets these experiences while still keeping in check with reality. Sometimes bringing drama and fantasy to the ordinary. Casey Tan graduated with a Diploma in Fine Arts in 2016 from NAFA, where he was also a recipient of the Ngee Ann Kongsi Scholarship. Prior to NAFA, he studied Digital Animations at the Institute of Technical Education (2011-2012). In 2019, Casey Tan was awarded the UOB Most Promising Artist of the Year. Besides receiving commissions, his artworks are also part of private collections, and they were featured in several exhibitions at Cuturi Gallery, Paris Asia Now and ART SG.

In his recent practice, he tries to avoid operating by intuition; instead, he takes time to understand and explore different ways of interpreting a particular scenario. He strives to create works that hold narrative and experiments in different ways of using acrylic as a medium.

Faris Heizer (b. 1998, Singapore)

Faris Heizer is an artist who lives and works in Singapore. Working within the tradition of figurative painting, his works are based on personal observations of contemporary society and its structural workings revolving around capitalism and gender. In particular, Heizer gives form to the behavioural and performative aspects of social relations that arise from such. His artistic inquiries often feature the working class in a range of imagined realities charged with intimacy, tension, and bewilderment.

Graduated from NAFA with a Diploma in Fine Arts in 2018, Faris Heizer held three solo shows at Cuturi Gallery and have since participated in several exhibitions including Tang Contemporary in Beijing, Galerie LJ in Paris, Christie’s, Harpers Gallery in New York, Kristin Hjellegjerde Gallery in Schloss Görne, Asia Now in Paris, Kohn Gallery in Los Angeles and ART SG in Singapore.

Joel Seow (b. 1997, Singapore)

Joel Seow is an artist and educator. A graduate of the Rhode Island School of Design, he approaches contemporary representational painting with tenderness and a reverence for the craft.

His works explore the tension between intimacy and urban isolation, and how one’s memory and state of mind interact with familiar spaces. Layered with personal symbolism and autobiographical experiences, the spaces, objects, and figures in his paintings shift between solidity and transience, directly engaging with the inevitable opacity inherent in creating deeply personal images. His works have been featured in exhibitions in both Singapore and the USA. Joel was also a 2022 grantee of the Elizabeth Greenshields Foundation and a finalist of the AXA Art Prize 2022 at the New York Academy of Art.

Marla Bendini (b. 1986, Singapore)

Marla Bendini is a BFA Interactive Media graduate of the School of Art, Design & Media (ADM), Nanyang Technological University (2013), where she focused on interactive video installations, film and performance. She started painting and making installations during her junior college education (2004).

Marla Bendini is also a cross-disciplinary artist and trans woman working in painting, text, sound and performance to articulate the infinitely faceted transgender experience on her own terms. Her current painting practice uses the female gaze through a combination of writing, drawing, painting, collage, and printmaking to create layered ‘documentations’ of a unique woman’s experience.

To date, Marla Bendini has performed and exhibited in Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, Macau, Sweden,Spain and the United States of America.

Oneal Parbo (b. 1997, Singapore)

Oneal Parbo incorporates either automatic painting or drawing that progressively develops into biomorphic shapes. Thereupon, he adopts elements of composition such as repetition and symmetry. This interplay between the lack of conscious effort from automatism and control through composing or altering the object is how these forms emerge. The contours depicted are non-representational, yet evoke a feeling of seclusion, paired with an unearthly quality in the subject matter. Fundamentally, this approach of refraining himself in providing any form of narrative allows him to concentrate on the compositional aspects of his work.

Oneal Parbo spent his formative childhood growing up in Singapore. He graduated from the Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts in 2018 and has since taken part in several shows including solo presentations Slow Burn and Voyages at Cuturi Gallery in 2022 and 2021, respectively.

Shen Jiaqi (b. 1989, Singapore)

Shen Jiaqi’s practice delves into the historical and visual tapestry of the city, documenting the varied lives and experiences within the urban landscape. Her works serve as a visual chronicle, layering the stoic presence of architecture and industrial machinery with the adaptive nature of urban vegetation, and the fleeting essence of human presence. Through a nuanced exploration of themes, Shen’s works navigate the complex terrain of individual identity amidst the perpetual flux of our environment.

Shen obtained her MFA from LASALLE College of the Arts (with Goldsmiths, London) in 2022. She previously studied painting at NAFA (2010) and Visual Art & Drama Education at NIE (2015). Her work has featured in public showcases including Our Heartlands by Plural Art Magazine, Past.Future.Present. by National Gallery Singapore, NAC’s Streets of Hope, and Towards Sojourn – a McLaren GT project with Louis Vuitton. Shen Jiaqi received a Highly Commended award in the 2021 UOB Painting of the Year, Emerging Artist category and the Winston Oh Travel Award in 2022. Shen held her third solo show with Cuturi Gallery in 2024. In 2025, she exhibited at S.E.A. Focus and ART SG.

Vanessa Liem (b. 2002, Singapore)

Vanessa Liem graduated under the International Baccalaureate Career-related Programme (IBCP) in Visual Arts at School of the Arts, Singapore (SOTA) in 2020.

Liem delves into the themes of voyeurism and power dynamics inherent in the relationship between the viewer and painting. Through figuration, she explores performativity in the depiction of self, and the reclaiming of our agency through the choreography of her figures.

Vanessa Liem has participated and curated several SOTA art exhibitions. For her work, she won Gold for the 2019 UOB Painting of the Year, Emerging Category. In 2025, Vanessa Liem received her Bachelor’s Degree of Fine Arts in Painting at the University of the Arts, London.

Yom Bo Sung (b. 1996, Singapore)

Born in Daejeon, South Korea, Singaporean artist Yom Bo Sung taps into his own transnational experiences to explore the idiosyncratic nature of social, political and cultural identities. Reappropriating cultural symbols and imageries for his miniature sculptures, large-scale installations and free-standing sculptures, his wryly humorous practice picks up on the subtleties underlying the wide range of religions, languages and customs in the world.

Yom received his Bachelor of Fine Arts in Sculpture from the Slade School of Fine Art in London, UK in 2020. He was awarded the Harper’s BAZAAR Art Prize Singapore in 2016, for his work ‘Gunny Stack’. He was also the youngest artist to be selected for the two iterations of the 4482 [SASAPARI] exhibition in London (2018, 2019). Yom Bo Sung held his solo show, Our Foreign Home, at Cuturi Gallery recently, and he continues to exhibit both locally and internationally.

About the Gallery

Founded in 2019, Cuturi Gallery is a contemporary art gallery based in Singapore with a strong focus on emerging Singaporean talents, many of whom form the core of the gallery’s roster. While rooted in its local context, Cuturi Gallery also actively collaborates with emerging and established artists across borders, extending its vision beyond Southeast Asia and Asia-Pacific, fostering meaningful exchanges that bridge cultural perspectives between the East and the West. This ongoing dialogue is central to the gallery’s mission.

In 2020, the gallery launched an in-house residency programme, offering both local and international artists the opportunity to develop new work in Singapore, culminating in a solo presentation. In 2022, Cuturi Gallery began a programme of satellite exhibitions in London, with plans to establish a permanent international outpost by the end of 2025. Cuturi Gallery is located in a conserved heritage shophouse in Kampong Glam, one of Singapore’s most vibrant cultural precincts and home to a growing ecosystem of independent art spaces and museums.

Nestled in a beautiful conservation shophouse, Cuturi Gallery stands in Singapore’s vibrant arts and cultural precinct of Kampong Glam, home to a myriad of independent art spaces and museums.

(Text and images courtesy of Cuturi Gallery)