Peacock Power: Beauty and Symbolism Across Cultures
With its dazzling feathers and spectacular tail, the peacock has long symbolised beauty, power, and divinity across Asia. Its image travelled widely, inspiring sacred imagery, luxury ornament, and everyday adornment. Shaped by diverse cultural influences, Peranakan art provides an ideal starting point for this journey. Each object invites us to consider how a motif moved between regions and contexts, revealing the networks that connect peoples and how artistic traditions evolve through exchange.
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Batik Nyonyas: Three Generations of Art and Entrepreneurship
11 Oct 2024 – 31 Aug 2025Family, art, and entrepreneurship converge in the story of three visionary Peranakan women from Indonesia – Nyonya Oeij Soen King, her daughter-in-law Nyonya Oeij Kok Sing, and her granddaughter Jane Hendromartono. From the 1890s to 1980s, they produced impressive batiks in the renowned batik centre of Pekalongan on Java’s north coast. This exhibition explores the lives and works of these women, revealing how each became a batik master in her own right, and how they responded to the rapid political, cultural, and economic changes of their times to run a business that produced great art.
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Fukusa: Japanese Gift Covers from the Chris Hall Collection
19 Apr–25 Aug 2024"Fukusa: Japanese Gift Covers from the Chris Hall Collection" presents a group of fukusa and related Japanese textiles from the renowned Chris Hall collection, explored through the themes of craft, trade and exchange, and the act of gifting across cultures. It celebrates a major gift of Japanese art from Chris Hall to ACM.
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Likeables
19 Jan–22 Feb 2024The “Likeables” exhibition presents a continuous exploration of objects and furniture designed by Studio Juju, with the pursuit of creating likeable physical form attributes that are emotive and experiential. Made with diverse techniques in various materials, the exhibition showcases the sensibilities and thought processes of the studio.
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Amek Gambar: Peranakans and Photography
5 May 2018 - 24 March 2019Amek Gambar presents over a century of photographs, tracing the emergence, adoption and evolution of photography in Southeast Asia.
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Nyonya Needlework: Embroidery and Beadwork in the Peranakan World
24 June 2016 - 26 March 2017This exhibition celebrates the art of nyonya needlework, a vibrant part of Peranakan Chinese heritage. Spectacular curtains and hangings, delicate purses, handkerchiefs, and slippers were painstakingly stitched with tiny beads, silk, and gold and silver threads for special occasions and as gifts.
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Great Peranakans: Fifty Remarkable Lives
23 May 2015 - 3 April 2016Great Peranakans celebrates the achievements of 50 men and women who have shaped Singaporean life and culture over the past two centuries.
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