About the Exhibition  

SAM Mini Mobile Museum is a travelling art exhibition held in partnership with the National Library Board. 

The Mini Mobile Museum introduces the multifaceted nature of contemporary art through a selection of SAM’s permanent collection artworks, adapted for non-museum spaces and created by Southeast Asian artists. Featuring art forms like drawing, installation, sound and video, the Mini Mobile Museum invites the viewer to an intimate experience of the commissioned artwork within a public space.

On view: The Dream from the Other Side by Singaporean artist Melissa Tan

The Dream from the Other Side by Singaporean Melissa Tan examines the mapping of Singapore from a historical perspective through the earliest topographical map of the city in 1958 to those of the present day. Over the course of its showing across the three libraries – Woodlands, Jurong and Tampines Regional Libraries – the installation will evolve to represent how these three different areas have been transformed through destruction and development. The surfacing or disappearing of new towns and water bodies amongst other features, have caused these regions to change in shape and size, changes that will be reflected in each sculpture as the exhibition progresses. The work invites audiences to observe these modifications as reflections of the constructive changes around us, as well as to speculate on the future of Singapore’s terrain.

About the Artist

Melissa Tan (b. 1989, Singapore) is a visual artist based in Singapore and received her BA (Fine Arts) from Lasalle College of the Arts in 2011. Her works are based on nature, themes of transience and beauty of the ephemeral. Her recent projects revolve around landscapes and the process of formation. Interested in geography and textures of rocks, she explores to translate the visual language through different mediums. Employing processes such as paper cutting, painting and silk-screen techniques, she is interested in materiality and how the medium supports the work. Though trained as a painter, she also works with video, sound and objects.