Justin Loke unveils Art as a Sharp Weapon: Revised, Remake, Return (1940–2026) , a new work commissioned by National Gallery Singapore for its newly opened exhibition, Art Remembers.
Bringing together 20 artworks centring on Southeast Asia, the exhibition examines how artists work with archives to address forgotten, lesser known, or marginalised histories. At the same time, it opens up new possibilities for how these stories can be seen and understood from a contemporary perspective. The exhibition invites visitors to move beyond dominant narratives and to think of art as a record of history, and the artist as a storyteller of a shared past.
Justin's Art as a Sharp Weapon: Revised, Remake, Return (1940–2026) revisits Art as a Sharp Weapon, a graduation address delivered during wartime in 1940 by Lim Hak Tai, founding principal of the Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts. Justin Loke translated the speech into English in 2013, when it was first presented in a group exhibition at NAFA curated by Dr Wang Ruobing.
In this second iteration, the speech is reframed as a contemporary relic, echoing objects such as the Rosetta Stone, whose layered inscriptions embody translation, transmission and survival. The text appears not merely as a historical document, but as a fragment that continues to endure through preservation, reinterpretation and return.
Through translation and remake, the urgencies of the past resurface within contemporary conditions. Here, translation is more than the linguistic transmission of information. It is a message addressed to an addressee, whose meaning must be interpreted across time.
Art Remembers
21 Aug - 18 Oct 2026
National Gallery Singapore
City Hall Wing, Level 3,
Singtel Special Exhibition Gallery 1 and City Hall Chamber
