Towards Happiness, Prosperity & Progress:
Reflections on the Singapore Spirit

Group Exhibition

02 October–07 December 2025
The Private Museum
Singapore, Singapore

Curated by Andrea Fam, John Z.A. Tung, Michelle Ho, Deborah Lim, Michael Lee, &  Kurti Upadhyaya
Images Courtesy of The Private Museum


Related Artworks

Destruction Comes at a Price (2025)
Weave Study 4 (Time, Reconfigured, Warped) (2025)

Description

Exercpt of Essay by Curator Andrea Fam

Anticipation and its inevitable unravelling enter the gallery next. Samuel Xun’s Bouquet of Disappointment turns attention to expectation and its collapse. The bouquet—traditionally a symbol of celebration, affection, or condolence—appears here as an arrangement past its bloom, its tenderness tinged with irony; it becomes a site of tension, humour, and subtle melancholy. Drawing on Euro-American lineages of camp and kitsch, the work reconfigures soft sculpture and fashion-derived gestures into an emblem of frustration, longing, and unconventional experience. The work stages the aftermath of desire: where beauty wilts, yet sentiment persists. In this new presentation, the bouquet drapes over a half-dress mannequin, inviting contemplation on how failure, irony, and longing are encoded visually.

The work captures the peculiar intimacy of disappointment: how personal narrative and cultural context entwine, shaping identity and affect in ways both tender and cynical.