The Everyday Museum | Sea of flags and The fruit of deceit

The Everyday Museum | Sea of flags and The fruit of deceit
2025

Sea of flags engages with the history and identity of Tanjong Pagar and is a tribute to the memory of the district’s massive development over two centuries. The flags that make up the installation are an assemblage of almost 400 material swatches colour-matched with the landscape and architecture as well as natural and man-made materials that have defined the vicinity’s industries of the past. Moving like a ripple with the wind, Sea of flags' presence on the reclaimed land where Tanjong Pagar Distripark stands today signifies the fleetingness of the physical world where spatial boundaries are indeterminate. Constantly shifting and blurring, they evoke the capricious movement of the surrounding sea. Further extending the colour compendium of Tanjong Pagar through alluring visuals of the nutmeg is The fruit of deceit which alludes to the nutmeg’s slighted history in Singapore’s development. A site-specific response to the history of Tanjong Pagar and its evolving identity, The fruit of deceit foregrounds the notion of nature as a commodity against the physical site of the old Keppel Harbour and present-day Tanjong Pagar Distripark—logistical nodes from different eras that facilitate the circulation of materials, goods, ideas, people and capital.

Sea of flags and The fruit of deceit is part of Port/raits of Tanjong Pagar, a public art trail commissioned by The Everyday Museum, a public art initiative of Singapore Art Museum made possible through venue partnership with Mapletree Investments Pte Ltd.

View the film here. 

Source: Singapore Art Museum