as intended

lim jia qi

Venue: INSTINC Space, 39 Keppel Rd, #03-10 Tanjong Pagar Distripark, Singapore 089065

Exhibition Duration: 10 to 25 October 2026 | Wed-Fri, 1PM-7PM. Sat - Sun, 1PM-6PM

Opening Reception: 9 October 2026 (Fri.), 5:30PM–8:30PM | RSVP

Artist Talk: 10 October 2026 (Sat.), 1-2PM | RSVP and 17 October 2026 (Sat.), 2-3PM | RSVP

brief

As Intended is a solo exhibition exploring Singapore's urban landscape and the ways nature is incorporated, represented, managed, and experienced within the built environment. Drawing from Lim Jia Qi's ongoing interest in Singapore's everyday spaces, the exhibition brings together paintings on carved woodblocks and drypoint prints centred on familiar sites such as HDB void decks, sheltered walkways, building facades, and urban infrastructure. The works consider a city that is constantly being constructed, maintained, replaced, and renewed. Within this changing landscape, nature appears in many forms, from living trees and fleeting shadows to decorative motifs and designed representations. These different forms raise questions about what is natural, what is constructed, and how the two have become increasingly intertwined in Singapore's urban environment.

As Intended reflects on a Singapore that is continually being made and remade. Through familiar urban spaces, representations of nature, and material processes that transform fleeting traces into lasting marks, the exhibition considers what is preserved, what disappears, and what remains in a changing city.

It asks viewers to look again at the ordinary spaces around them and consider the relationship between what has been deliberately constructed and what continues to exist beyond our intentions.

BIO of Artist lim jia qi

Grounded in the cultural landscape of Singapore, Lim Jia Qi’s practice reflects on how urban design, nature, and lived experience shape the collective identity of the city. Her works trace the quiet tension between the natural and the man-made, revealing how carefully curated greenery, domestic interiors, and public housing spaces become sites of memory, aspiration, and belonging.

Trained as a printmaker, Lim approaches her practice as both an artist and observer of Singapore’s ongoing transformation. By merging printmaking and painting on carved wood panels, she reimagines traditional techniques through a contemporary Singaporean lens. Her process mirrors the city’s own balance between preservation and progress, where heritage and innovation intersect, and where nature, though carefully cultivated, becomes inseparable from urban life. Through these layered surfaces, Lim captures how human presence and planned order coexist, revealing the subtle poetry of Singapore’s constructed landscapes.

Her practice has garnered steady institutional and market recognition. Her work has since been featured internationally in Sandu Publishing’s 'Craving Blocks: Printmakers and Their Stories' (2023), presented at ART SG's NEW/NOW(2025), and realized on an architectural scale through a commissioned public woodcut mural for the National Health Group at Serangoon Polyclinic (2025).

Website: www.limjiaqi.com/ | Instagram: @limjiaqi.art