sotto voce (禺)
chen min suen
Venue: INSTINC Space, 39 Keppel Rd, #03-10 Tanjong Pagar Distripark, Singapore 089065
Exhibition Duration: 12 March to 21 March 2026 | Wed-Fri, 1PM-7PM. Sat - Sun, 1PM-6PM
Opening Reception: 11 March 2026 (Wed.), 5:30PM–8:30PM | RSVP
Performance/Artist Guided Tour: 14 March 2026 (Sat), 3-4PM | RSVP
brief
Sotto Voce (禺) explores the quiet gestures and subtle rhythms that shape everyday life within the urban environment. Taking 禺 (yú) as a point of departure, a condition of convergence and in-between-ness, the exhibition reflects on how bodies move through shared spaces, adapting to constraint, proximity, and flow. Rather than focusing on visible transformation, the works attend to small accumulations of movement and gestures: pauses, adjustments, and traces that gradually shape how the city is experienced.
Across painting, installation, and performance, the exhibition unfolds in a restrained register. Sotto Voce (禺) invites viewers to slow down and consider the quieter dimensions of change—moments where stillness and motion coexist, and where everyday actions become part of a larger, evolving landscape.
BIO of Artist Chen Min Suen
Shaped early on by living alongside straits and tidal waters, Min Suen has long been attuned to the flow of tides and breath—a rhythm that continues to inform her artistic practice as both a visual artist and a music performer. Her work explores subtle gestures and emotional traces as they evolve in tandem with urban ecology, where bodily movement and the city’s rhythms mutually shape and sustain one another. She focuses on how everyday life leaves quiet imprints on the body and its surroundings. Her work has been exhibited in Singapore and Malaysia, and often engages the city as a site through which broader questions of urban ecology, emotional diaspora, and silent convergence can be observed. Working primarily with traditional Chinese water-based mediums, her artworks translate restrained movements and rhythmic strokes into moments of gentle resistance. As the city undergoes quiet and constant change, Min Suen’s practice draws out pauses from continuous motion, inviting reflection on transience, urban becoming, and the space between stillness and movement.
Website: chenminsuen.com | Instagram: @suennn_