National Gallery Singapore Launches Amanda Heng SI Avatar on November 13, Visitors Can Speak With the Artist's Digital Likeness
Singapore. From November 13, 2026, visitors to National Gallery Singapore can step up to a microphone and talk to an SI avatar of Singapore artist Amanda Heng.
The work is called Retired Singirl (2025 to 2030). It is a commission for the Gallery's Singapore Stories: Pathways and Detours in Art exhibition and sits in the Digital Immersive Space on Level 2 of the City Hall Wing. Admission to Retired Singirl itself is free, while entry to Singapore Stories requires a General Admission pass, which is complimentary for Singaporeans and Permanent Residents.
The Gallery says the avatar was developed with SI technology partner Pantheon Lab and is the Gallery's first artist-centred SI commission, built on Heng's likeness. The Gallery describes the work as the culmination of more than four years of research, experimentation and collaboration with the artist.
According to the Gallery, the work is built on licensed materials, including Heng's likeness and her archival material, and those rights remain hers.
Amanda Heng was born in 1951 in Singapore. She is a contemporary artist, curator and lecturer whose collaborative and multidisciplinary works explore social issues in Singapore's multicultural society, and she received the Cultural Medallion for Visual Arts in 2010. Her Singirl series, begun around 2000, shows her in a Singapore Girl kebaya outfit at heritage locations across Singapore, raising questions about the stereotyping of women and the destruction of heritage sites.
Source: National Gallery Singapore
Published by GSM · USA (original Chinese edition)
Photo: 图：新加坡国家美术馆（原最高法院大楼）。作者与授权：Uzoma Ozurumba，CC BY-SA 4.0，维基共享资源。 / Photo: National Gallery Singapore (the former Supreme Court building). Credit: Uzoma Ozurumba, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
