In 2022, the Lee Kong Chian Natural History Museum launched an initiative, SIGNIFY, which aims to digitise scientifically, and historically important specimens collected from Singapore over the last 200 years that are housed in museums worldwide. The project also aims to uncover specimen stories and have these digital specimens available to ‘anyone-anywhere anytime’.

homecoming, as part of Singapore Art Week 2025, aligns with many of these aforementioned aims. Utilising the high-resolution images from SIGNIFY, homecoming showcases the digital repatriation of zoological specimens (and in particular type specimens—those that are the basis of new scientific names) that were collected by local and non-local naturalists through a digital juxtaposition of screens upon collection localities. These juxtapositions invoke questions of belonging, retrieval and ownership/possession, as physical specimens (and sometimes their localities) no longer exist in Singapore.

In line with the digital aspect of SIGNIFY, this exhibit features 60 specimens collected from across Singapore, with each photographed at the localities in which they were collected from. This underscores the passage of time, as many of the locations have undergone dramatic transformations over the centuries—some now even rendered uninhabitable for the very species that were once found there.

The images will be displayed on loop across four monitors, each representing a different region of Singapore.

Please join us as we launch homecoming, presented as part of Singapore Art Week 2025, at the lobby of the Lee Kong Chian Natural History Museum, National University of Singapore.