Tiong Bahru, Singapore’s first public housing estate, is also home to our country’s last surviving pre-World War II civilian air raid shelter. Built during the 1930s as a covered kids’ playground at the basement of Blk 78 Guan Chuan Street, this 1,500-sqm space is where to view “99 Years”, an exhibition presented by Digital Art Week Asia (DAWA) 2026.
Curated by Warren Wee, it brings together nine artists from across Asia in an exploration of life’s temporal nature through digital and new media art. “The plain, unembellished truth is that nothing lasts forever, and everything is transient in this journey called life,” says Wee, framing the exhibition’s philosophical lens.
DAWA, which began in 2022 in Ginza, Tokyo, was among Japan’s first digital screen-based exhibitions at a time when the public just returned to physical events post Covid measures. The platform has since expanded to embrace audience participation, bio-art, and experimental media, reflecting the broader evolution of new media art across Asia. “New media art is much broader compared to digital art, where computers and software are used to create artworks,” as Wee explains.
Unlike traditional art fairs, DAWA is a “conceptual survey,” Wee clarifies. “DAWA does not operate like an arts fair, hence there are no commercial market pressures as the platform’s primary purpose is not to sell art, but to present an overview of new media works which fit a particular theme or concept selected for each edition.” This approach allows curatorial freedom; artists are selected for conceptual strength rather than marketability, and site-specific works can flourish without commercial constraints.
Central to the 2026 exhibition’s narrative is the Tiong Bahru air raid shelter. Situated on leasehold land, it is about 40 years away from the 99-year lease expiry. After that, “the property reverts to the state for future redevelopment, highlighting its temporal nature.”
The shelter’s history resonates with the exhibition’s engagement with memory, time, and systems. “The works presented are a deliberate and thoughtful visual response to the many fleeting moments we live in, reflect on and experience,” Wee adds.
By activating unconventional, historically charged spaces such as the Tiong Bahru air raid shelter, DAWA transforms the viewing experience. “The opportunity for audiences to be given access to visit unconventional or historically charged spaces normally closed to the public is special especially in land scarce Singapore and makes the art viewing experience an indelible one,” Wee explains.
Nine artists (Bianca Tse, Boedi Widjaja, Jake Tan, Goh Chun Aik, JinJin Xu, Robert Zhao Renhui, Samantha Lee, Sareena Sattapon, and Seahee Chang) feature in “99 Years”. Boedi Widjaja investigates ancestry, memory, and inherited experiences through bio-art and interactive DNA encoding, while Bianca Tse reimagines her hometown of Hong Kong as a vertical city built on borrowed time. Jake Tan explores the interface between human data and emotion in works like MR(AI) and Data-St0rm. The former responds to the artist’s real time heartbeat, while the latter responds to ambient movement.
Samantha Lee’s ‘was this you?’ confronts audiences with deepfake representations, interrogating digital identity and post-truth existence. Other works, including Robert Zhao Renhui’s environmental meditation on trees and Seahee Chang’s sensory climate animations, underscore the exhibition’s reflections on impermanence and human-environment interaction.
“All nine artists presenting in this edition of DAWA have their own individual artistic practices and responses to the theme, hence the audiences should make their own judgement to decide which works resonate better with them,” Wee says.
Which brings us back to the crucial role of curators. “To ensure the artistic vision is not lost in an era of short attention spans and fragmented focus, driven by constant digital stimulation and information overload, curators must create experiences that allow audiences to slow down and engage meaningfully,” he concludes.
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